


A Girl With Fire

by semele



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-04-05 18:51:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 23
Words: 34,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4191078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Bellamy sees Raven, she’s covered in blood.</p><p>A The 100/Hunger Games fusion in which Bellamy and Raven are the Victors of the 64th and 66th Hunger Games respectively. </p><p>The rape/non-con warning is there because of the canon-typical forced prostitution. I try not to spell it out too much, but it's hard to deny it's there. There is also a fair share of canon-typical violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The camera is with Beetee's girl

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by Anon, who wanted a Bellamy/Raven Hunger Games AU. I might be going a touch overboard with the wordcount.
> 
> Since this story is still very much under construction, I would appreciate any kind of feedback. It'll help me see if I'm going in the right direction, and making my meaning clear.
> 
>   
>   
> banner by the wonderful kwritten

The first time Bellamy sees Raven, she’s covered in blood.

(It’s not true, of course. He must’ve seen her Reaped; must’ve glanced at her parade costume, and discussed her training score with Blight. He even remembers, if he focuses really hard, the sound of the gong, and Haymitch Abernathy saying: “I think the camera is with Beetee’s girl”. But there is no image he can attach to any of those thoughts, so every one of Raven’s faces he sees over the years, he compares to that first face: a splash of blood on her cheek, and teeth clenched stubbornly on a thin lip as she struggles to not make a sound. 

Maybe that was also when Finnick Odair shook his head quietly, watching his tribute set up a trap that would eventually get him killed; or maybe it’s just that Bellamy, in the free time he now has, reads way too many books.)

Finnick's boy is the first one Raven kills, in an explosion that makes the forest floor shake with impact. Afterwards, she wipes the dirt off her forehead, and relentlessly sets up a new trap. It's such a hit in the Capitol: a sharp, gorgeous girl wreaking havoc with the kind of creativity that captures the mind. She doesn't just take the bombs used to rig the platforms; she dismantles them meticulously, then takes bits and pieces to put in her backpack before she finds shelter. Her traps are twigs and ropes with a little extra, and by the time The Final Eight rolls in, every girl in the Capitol wants to be Raven.

For Bellamy, those days pass in a blur of fear and insomnia. His Charlotte gets her hands on a knife, and even though she does well, keeping herself fed and dry, the audience is bored with her. Still, he feels hopeful; this is better than last year, better than Matt dying in the bloodbath, and Sally hopelessly competing against Finnick Odair until he speared her like a fish nine days in. Raven, he thinks, they can fight. Charlotte is good with the knife.

The knife ends up deep in Finn Collins' gut, and Raven howls like a wolf when she sees her District partner's face on the night sky. She finds Charlotte two days later, and it's a fight Bellamy watches until his lip bleeds. Raven doesn't know who to blame, so she decides to kill everyone just in case; looking at her, you'd think she wants to kill the arena itself. She takes a wound to her back, but hers isn't the blood Bellamy sees, and for one long, long minute, he hates Raven Reyes with all his being.

That very night, Finnick takes him drinking to the roof of the Training Center, and they miss the fine details of Raven's last trap. When they return to the other mentors, Haymitch is slurring something about Wiress, and maybe he's right; maybe this is Wiress' tactics, the way she is binding branches with fingers twisted like talons in spasm of pain. It's hard to hate her now, with her filthy face and a festering hole she obviously has in her lower back.

When the last tribute goes up in flames in her trap, Raven is already unconscious.

Bellamy half-expects her to recover in mere hours; to yell at her surgeons, and walk out of the hospital fueled by sheer stubbornness. He is fairly sure he’s never seen such a strong will to live. As it is, Raven is in surgery for fifteen hours, Beetee and Wiress standing outside the door, their faces looking as if the Games weren’t over yet. 

“Do they know her from home?” asks Finnick in a low voice, his fingers curled around a glass of water.

Chaff shakes his head.

“Beetee might, but I don’t think so,” he says. “It’s not like he teaches all the genius kids they have in Three.”

And Raven is a freaking genius, that much is clear. She doesn’t just know her way around explosives – she wields tools with sureness of hand that speaks of confidence and ease, and of being used to finding her own way. Raven Reyes is the kind of girl who forces you to always remember her name.

(Bellamy spends a lot of time thinking about Raven in those slow days after her Games. Maybe it’s the Capitol craze rubbing off on him despite his best efforts, or maybe there’s just something captivating about this girl and her unimaginable drive to survive.

Or maybe it’s just easier to focus on something, anything that takes his mind off all those hands and mouths he would much rather forget.)

The closing ceremonies are predictable – as difficult as last year, and a lot easier than the year before, when it was Bellamy sitting in that godforsaken chair. The recap is narrated like an action movie, swift and easy, Raven’s kills blazingly bloodless. The narration is so light that halfway through, Bellamy almost forgets this is real; up until Charlotte’s knife shown in loving detail, soft flesh and a boy’s last breath, one of the best pieces of television this year.

It makes him feel like a hyena, watching Raven watch her partner die.

After the show, there is reality: a tribute train and two coffins Blight watches for hours in a ritual Bellamy is starting to understand. Things were too raw last year, or maybe he was too much in his own head, feeling like crap for failing Sally, but also for things he agreed to do way too easily.

(Octavia was fourteen. He couldn’t risk the Gamemakers even thinking about her.)

He’s more peaceful this year, the Capitol locked tight in a box somewhere in the back of his mind, so he keeps Blight company in his vigil as they ride home surrounded by the eerie post-Games silence. There are things he can change and things he can’t, and he’s done smashing his fists bloody against concrete walls. The world is what it is.

(Octavia is fifteen.)

They arrive at Seven late in the evening, the platform empty but for three families waiting together in silence. Charlotte’s dad looks ten years older than on Reaping day, and Steven’s parents aren’t much better, but there are other people here as well, and just seeing them makes Bellamy feel a bit warmer. His mother stayed home like he asked, understanding without being told that it wouldn’t do for her to greet her child in front of grieving parents, but Nate and Harper are here for him, and Bellamy is so grateful he could laugh.

This is the last thing he has to get through, a few choking moments when the families pretend they don’t blame him, and he pretends he believes them. Then there’s Nate’s hand on his shoulder, and Harper’s warm arms wrapping themselves around his neck. 

He feels a bit guilty once he notices they lost track of Blight in the confusion of the train station, and let him walk all the way to the Victors’ Village on his own, but it gets lost in the relief of _home_ , the smell of pine, and the sight of O running up to hug the life out of him. His mom kisses him on both cheeks, and as he turns to promise Nate he’ll meet him in the woods tomorrow first thing, he doesn’t think of Raven Reyes at all.

***

The house is ridiculously huge.

Raven feels like this is the only thing she’s been noticing in the last days: the sheer size of everything, a huge bed in a huge room, and a gigantic table in a comically oversized kitchen. Even her workshop is a lot bigger than what she’s used to, and she doesn’t have to share it with anyone, ( _has no one to share it with_ ), not now and not ever; she’s determined to enjoy it even if it kills her.

Her mother seems overwhelmed as well, lost in too many rooms and too many thoughts, and in a daughter she can’t look at without flinching, as if she ever expected anything better from her. Most days, they dance around each other awkwardly, but it’s not difficult to avoid one person in a house this big. Raven honestly doesn’t know why she’s even surprised. Mom always liked her better when she was with Finn.

Wiress lives next door, and she’s kind in a way Raven learned not to expect from people: steady, and patient, and every day, even when she has trouble making herself understood by anyone but Beetee. There are a few things Wiress knows about Raven, and then a few things she only thinks she knows, but Raven never corrects her; not since the day of her interview prep. It was the one time she panicked, suffocated by dresses, and shoes, and inevitability of death, and Wiress was the one to stay with her; to free her from the endless stretches of fabric, and tell her, in a very Wiress way, that it was okay to refuse to die.

Later that night, Raven slept with Finn for the very last time.

(She looked at his face for the very last time before she saw it on the night sky, and when Raven was in the hospital after her Games, Wiress made sure she knew how that face got there; knew the how and the why, and had a chance to cry where no one could see her yet.)

So Raven makes her face smooth whenever Wiress comes to visit; not smooth enough to be offensive, but easy in a way that chases away worry. In the great scheme of things, it’s not difficult to be nice to Wiress.

Beetee explains everything Raven needs to know about talents, and she takes up inventing like a good Victor. It’s lucky, really, that she blew up all those people during the Games; if she hadn’t, the Capitol might’ve pressured her to choose something a bit more girly, but as it is, no one wants to deprive the audience of their explosive darling; Raven Reyes, the girl with fire.

Her mother hides booze in the house as if Raven herself was flammable, and in any other time, Raven would’ve found this funny.

***

Everyone else in Seven gets over the Games a lot faster than Bellamy, and it probably should stop surprising him already.

O is a whirlwind in the house, and he sees through her attempts to keep him busy, but it makes him grateful rather than annoyed. It’s important to have people in Seven, people to keep the woods from swallowing you whole, and the rules are no different in Victors’ Village, so Bellamy talks to Harper, proofreads O’s homework, and even lets Nate talk him into making a small vegetable garden on the Village green. Those are his lifelines, and Bellamy understands about lifelines.

It’s an exercise he starts when he’s been home for a couple of weeks: don’t think about the Games until Victory Tour time, mind your garden and be the person your mother is proud to see every morning. In September, Nate turns eighteen, and gets assigned a spot in a logging camp, which makes for difficult six weeks for both Bellamy and Harper (even if for very different reasons), but they push through, and Bellamy is happy, happier than he’s been for months.

(One night in October, he has one of those nightmares of his, Nate’s name being pulled out of the Reaping ball, and it’s frightfully, chillingly real, but then he wakes up and laughs, crossed out, ohmygod, crossed out.

One birthday down. Two to go.)

Until November, mom watches him a bit more closely than he’d like, but once Nate comes back to his regular home half a mile away from the Village, even she relaxes a little, and Bellamy starts seeing her with needle and thread again, making sturdy jackets he and Octavia have such a terrible habit of losing in the woods, _shame on them_ , he tells the Peacekeepers sometimes, _it’s outrageous how the Capitol’s generosity is making them wasteful_. 

In another District, they would probably whip him for illegal distribution of goods, but here in Seven, the population is so scattered it’s not that simple to keep them under control, the woods offering food and shelter so easily that no one up there can be bothered to pester them too much. 

So Bellamy spends his days gathering mushrooms, losing jackets in a variety of sizes, and even working on his talent a bit, not that he expects to be asked about that ever again. He doesn’t think of Raven Reyes once until it’s Tour time again, and he sees her big, fake smile on his screen as she waves everyone goodbye, and hops on the train that will take her to up to Twelve.


	2. A lamp that looks like it’s going up in flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the train finally starts rolling, Raven can’t help but feel excited.
> 
> Warning for characters making racist remarks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to Amanda, Sarah and Nadège for their advice!

When the train finally starts rolling, Raven can’t help but feel excited.

This is something she always dreamed of, and despite the blood and carnage her Victory Tour is the one thing out of the whole Games that she is determined to enjoy. It’s not that she hates Three – Three is fine, as far as homes go, but Raven has always wanted to see what’s outside the fence, to meet people and see places, and to walk as far as her legs will carry her. 

Of course, she counted on having two working legs when she amused herself with those daydreams, but, well. It’s not like she only now notices that she doesn’t live in the perfect world.

Twelve is ridiculously far, but she has a separate train car set up as a mobile workshop, and there is this gadget she’s preparing for the big finale in the Capitol: a lamp that looks like it’s going up in flames, _a gift to her fans_ , as Lucrezia keeps saying; a perfect callback to the fiery traps Raven set during the Games. Being an escort, Lucrezia probably right when she says that it’ll make a splash, but Raven can’t help a choking feeling rising in her throat whenever she thinks about her newest invention.

Oh well. It’s probably stage fright anyway.

Beetee is unusually quiet as they move up the country, and this is the thing Raven ends up remembering best whenever she thinks back to her Victory Tour: his serene face as he stares out the window, his hand resting lightly on Wiress’ shoulder. It’s kind of cheating, really, if her sharpest memory from the most exciting trip of her life is something she might as well have seen at home, but, well. Someone mentioned the perfect world.

All they find in Twelve is a good dinner and one very drunk Haymitch Abernathy surrounded by people who couldn’t care less. The woods, as it turns out, are outside the fence, and inside, every spot that’s hard to get with a broom or a brush seems covered with a thin layer of coal dust, so much for sightseeing. Lucrezia is beside herself when she sees the locals’ “charming rustic ways”, but Raven focuses on her stew, determined to enjoy every single bite. The dead tributes’ parents are here as well, and they’re a lot more heartbroken than her mom would most likely be if things had gone differently, but Raven can’t, won’t apologize for being alive. During the official part, she went up on the stage, and gave the families their due of politeness and respect, and now she isn’t staring them down defiantly, either, but she’ll be damned if she lets the Games spoil her dinner.

It’s not like she put herself in that fucking arena.

So she bows, and thanks, and talks, and if she seems stand-offish or distant, nothing like the feisty darling from the Capitol’s dreams, Lucrezia will have to learn to live with a disappointment. Raven Reyes is not a trained monkey.

At least this is what she thinks up until she climbs the platform in Eleven, and sees Marge’s parents looking at her from under their daughter’s oversized portrait.

***

Bellamy thinks he manages to catch the exact moment when Raven goes motionless.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on, been there, done that; Amber’s weeping father and Gary’s furious mother never too far in the back of his mind. He never dared to ask Blight about ways to deal with this, and talking to Finnick didn’t really help. But then, maybe it wasn’t supposed to help. Bellamy vaguely remembers that before his Games, he never actually believed in a free pass for murderers.

Now it’s his turn to watch, and he’s astonished, really, by the way Raven deals, chin up, face straight; the expression Careers often wear, serious and sharp, except it doesn’t exactly look like she’s taking a page out of Cashmere’s book. There is anger in her posture and defiance on her face, lips twisted in accusation Bellamy can’t help but understand.

(Accusation he can’t _afford_ to understand.)

She celebrates three more of her own kills before she gets to Seven, including both tributes from Eight who ran into her trap together as they were foraging for food. Bellamy remembers the sound Cecelia made at her screen, and those few words Woof said in a language Bellamy doesn’t think he ever wants to know. Raven faces District Eight with the same stiff neck she displayed in Eleven and Nine, and the Capitol spins it so well Bellamy wonders who he’d have to fuck to poach Beetee’s escort. The mandatory viewing coverage has Raven as a silent action hero, fierce and strong, and so beautifully unbreakable hardly anyone notices how she can’t really put any weight on her left leg.

When the Tour train finally rolls into Seven, Bellamy thinks he knows exactly what to expect.

He gets instructions from the camera people to stick close to the new Victor. Producers in the Capitol want to start lightening the mood, and so they readjusted the schedule to give Raven two full days in Seven: a trip to a woodland paradise with a charming guide at her side. Bellamy seems like an obvious choice, young and handsome, his olive skin and black hair going so well with Raven’s dark coloring; _a matching set_ , the director says with a leer, and Bellamy makes sure to swallow the bad taste in his mouth before he gives himself over to the Tour preps.

It’s awkward, the first time he speaks to Raven Reyes; she’s known him for two years, and he’s known her for months, but neither is willing to talk about what they’ve seen on their screens. They have cameras trained on them, and it’s obvious that while not shy, Raven isn’t fully confident around them yet, so Bellamy steps in seamlessly to take control of the interaction. A handshake seems too cold for what the Capitol expects from them now, so he pulls her into a loose hug, their palms still linked in a formal greeting.

“Welcome to District Seven,” he says in a half-whisper the cameras are sure to pick up.

“Thank you.”

They don’t have a moment of privacy during the two days she spends in Seven, and it doesn’t bother him half as much as he thought it would. He doesn’t know her, this girl with a face washed clean of blood, who never avoids Charlotte’s sister’s steady gaze during the official ceremony, and who gives her speech in a composed, cold voice that leaves little to the imagination.

She’s lucky that the Capitol has imagination in heaps.

***

Raven doesn’t really have a good reason to expect that Four will be the worst of all the districts she visits. True, there was that boy, his lean body locked in a prototype cage that wasn’t rigged quite enough, and made him burn for long, long pointless seconds that no one, not even the Gamemakers, can be blamed for. But she got it better the next time, lesson learned, and he _was_ coming at her with a spear, his arms raised dangerously, and she baited him using his own training: ran in front of him until he was sure he had a clean shot, because no Career would ever risk a stupid failure. She wouldn’t have defeated him if he hadn’t been so determined to put on a good show.

Still, it doesn’t really matter how many times she tells herself that she won’t be blamed for anything but the unnecessary slowness of his death.

Same as it happened in Seven, her welcome committee in Four includes a young eye candy of a victor showing her around. Finnick Odair is a walking, talking smile, but there is an edge to him that Raven likes immediately: a sharp, quick brand of common sense that makes him stand out even more than his physical beauty. 

He doesn’t leave her side for the whole day, and the only moment when she can’t exactly spot him is when she’s standing on the platform with her plaque, determined that as soon as she gets off this damned thing, she _will_ enjoy this: her first and only time seeing the sea that she can smell even from here.

She won’t apologize for not wanting to die.

After the ceremony, she takes Wiress’ hand, and Finnick takes them both to the nearest beach. Lucrezia warns them that they only have fifteen minutes, but the director gives them twice as much. “You’re golden, sweetheart!” he exclaims as the crew snaps picture after picture, so Raven closes her eyes, swallows hard, and _enjoys_ , enjoys, damn it, until her hands almost bleed.

She spends the night in the workshop car, making sure that her flaming lamp has a slight malfunction that will prevent it from ever being mass-produced. If Beetee later notices she’s been fiddling with the design, he doesn’t rat her out.


	3. A different can of worms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> O is restless the night before the Reaping, and there is no single thing Bellamy can do about it.

O is restless the night before the Reaping, and there is no single thing Bellamy can do about it.

Harper has been in Victors’ Village since yesterday, and for once in her life she came visiting without Nate. It makes sense why she can’t stand him now; jealous of his immunity even though she’d never wish he didn’t have it. Both girls could perhaps stand Bellamy’s company, even though his name won’t appear on any of the slips tomorrow morning, but he doesn’t want to risk upsetting them, so he leaves them together anyway.

It’s quite a walk to the village where they all grew up, but it’s not like Bellamy can’t make it. He never let Nate know he’d be coming, and yet when he arrives, his friend is waiting for him under the exactly right tree, his face lacking the dumb grin he used to have back when they were kids.

It makes absolutely no sense for them to walk as far as here just to take a longer way to town, but the night before Reaping isn’t exactly about common sense.

“You’re late,” says Nate distractedly, and there is no real annoyance in his words even though he’s technically right. Seven is a huge district, tiny villages and camps scattered across vast forests that hide them like a shield, and their only town, where the Reaping takes place, is miles away; at least a five-hour walk. 

Most of the people from the village will start their march not long before dawn, but it’s not unusual for older kids to set out separately, the woods in Seven so devoid of wild animals that they’re safe even for small groups. It’s not like Bellamy and Nate will stand out. They’ve been walking like this for the last five years.

Bellamy’s feet feel light despite his tiredness, and for no more than half an hour, he lets the good feeling sink in – Nate aging out of the Reaping, so that they’ll never again have to fear becoming mentor and tribute. Given the size of their District, the odds were always laughably small; Bellamy didn’t know any of the kids he mentored so far, and he hadn’t seen his District partner once before their Reaping. Still, the odds have ways of playing out funny in the Games, so Bellamy isn’t going to lie to himself that he doesn’t feel the relief.

(One down. Two to go.)

It’s bad luck to talk about the Games during the Reaping March, so just in case, they don’t. Despite the fear gnawing at him slowly, this walk feels good: calming and incredibly grounding, as if he was drawing strength from the ground itself. All said and done, things are good in this little world of his.

He gives Octavia a bone-crushing hug before he mounts the stage, and she returns it with a solemn promise that she’ll be alright.

***

The Capitol doesn’t allow Wiress to stay home even though technically she doesn’t need to mentor this year. Raven has a nagging feeling that this is punishment for her stunt with the lamp, and it makes her want to set something on fire.

Or maybe she’s just getting angry about Wiress so that she doesn’t have to think about her tribute.

She probably shouldn’t judge, given how she wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine to Beetee last year, but still something about John rubs her the wrong way, and Raven can’t shake the feeling that he hates her for some reason. In comparison, Eleen seems almost serene, calm and steady in her misery, and Raven suspects this dignified behavior is simply a cover for a different can of worms, but, well. Beetee always says they need to focus on one problem at a time.

They’re one of the first teams to arrive, and overexcited preps immediately swarm around them like bees. While waiting for their tributes, they’re free to lend a hand to the mentors from nearer districts, and Raven immediately gets snatched by a beauty-thirsty pair that attacks her with wax and a suspiciously-smelling tub of _something_ , because apparently having hairy legs disqualifies you from training teenagers for slaughter.

The borrowed preps get shampoo into her eyes just like hers did last year, but even if the memory chokes her a little, they’re too excited to notice.

She’s supposed to be talking to the stylists now, but apparently Caius and Claudia went straight to Beetee out of sheer habit, so Raven has nothing to do but think. Her Arena was a ruin of a small town surrounded by a forest of nasty, and the previous few years followed a similar pattern, something wild and something man-made, _the post-apo_ trend, as the Capitol likes to call it – the hottest tourist destinations for integration trips and survival bachelorette parties. There is too much money in this for them not to keep milking it to its last, so Raven makes a mental note to tell Eleen and John everything she knows about avoiding traps in the ruins.

It’s a start.

***

A single sponsor meeting is all it takes to remind Bellamy just how far away from home he now is.

The girl waiting for him in a coffee shop just outside the Training Center seems nice for the Capitol, all charming smiles and reasonable shoes, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he knows she refused to deal with Bligh and requested him specifically, he’d probably have a relatively good time talking to her. For now, she’s acting like she only wants to give Leanne some money, so Bellamy pulls out a chair for her with his best District boy chivalry, and gets to work.

He slips into his role with ease he doesn’t want to think about, not-so-subtle compliments rolling off his tongue like marbles. He watched his mother do the very same thing for years, back when it was the only thing that could keep them all from starving, and if she could do it, then he isn’t too good to charm Capitol ladies out of their money under the President’s watchful eye.

(Octavia is sixteen.)

After half an hour, he’s left with a promise and a smile, and a phone number he knows he’ll call in a few days whether he likes it or not. He tells himself not to dwell – there is other work to do as well, parade makeup to approve, and two scared kids to talk down, so really, he has no time to be homesick or nurse his fragile feelings. 

His tributes. His responsibility.

***

The Games quickly become the whirlwind Raven remembers them to be, and if she doesn’t exactly welcome the memory, there is nothing she can do about it.

Finnick finds her right after the parade, and Raven greets him with a tight hug that surprises even herself. Wiress, she can tell, is slightly afraid of him, his angelic face notwithstanding, so Raven takes care to walk between them as they return to the Center.

"How are your tributes?" she asks Finnick awkwardly; it's the worst question ever, really, but it's not like any of them is able to think about anything else right now.

Finnick shrugs.

"Older than me," he says casually. "They were above me in training. Makes for some weird conversations at meals."

"What, that training you guys _obviously_ don't have?"

"Precisely."

There is a quietness to Finnick she doesn't really recognize, not from TV and not from the Tour, but as soon as journalists start circling around them, he puts his brave face back on, and pulls her into the show with him. With Wiress' warm presence behind her, Raven talks up her tributes for the first time even though she doesn't really have a strategy yet, and it's good, good, good.

Right. She ends up sitting in the Training Center lobby with her head in her hands as soon as John and Eleen go to bed because everything is so incredibly good.

“Raven?”

It takes her a second to place the guy who’s now approaching her from the general direction of the entrance, but it clicks once she looks past his flashy Capitol shirt.

“It’s Bellamy, right?” she asks without making any moves towards him. “District Seven? We met on the Tour.”

“Yeah. What’s up with you? Rough dinner with your tributes?”

There is a moment when Raven wants to shake her head. Everything is _fine_ , really, and anyway, Beetee has it under control the way he always does, so there is no reason for her to overreact. Besides, even if something was wrong, the last person she should talk about is a mentor from another District, not even one that looks like a cat that’s been bathing in glitter.

“I think my male tribute hates me,” she offers instead, because coming up with a lie would require a lot more effort than she’s willing to make at the moment. She feels rather than sees how Bellamy moves to sit beside her on the small couch. “Or he’s just really determined to come out alive.”

“That’s good. He can hate you, as long as it makes him stay mad enough to survive.”

Surprised by the simple openness of this statement, Raven finally turns to take her first good look at him. On her screen, he never seemed like the particularly bright type, and he didn’t exactly improve the impression when he spent two days telling her about the qualities of pine sap, but now there is no trace of stupidity in his questions or his watchful gaze. 

“You really do all that ancient history research as a talent, don’t you?” she blurts out, way too wiped to mind her tongue. “I mean, it’s _really_ not a ruse…”

She is greeted by stunned silence, then the first burst of sincere laughter she’s heard in days.


	4. The sponsor girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy calls his sponsor girl on the second day of training, and agrees to meet her on the first night of the Games. It's a prime date in the Capitol, or so people say; a night full of magic, when the thrill of the initial bloodbath fuels appetites and removes inhibitions. She must've paid the President a fortune.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be warned that while forced prostitution is heavily alluded to in this chapter, there is no description of a sexual encounter.

Bellamy calls his sponsor girl on the second day of training, and agrees to meet her on the first night of the Games. It's a prime date in the Capitol, or so people say; a night full of magic, when the thrill of the initial bloodbath fuels appetites and removes inhibitions. She must've paid the President a fortune.

Blight sets up a narrative for Cone, using his unusual name and wispy frame to set the boy up as a forest spirit, fast and mischievous and unimaginably charming, so Bellamy is left with coming up with a story for Leanne. He has a good idea, or so it feels: a strong, fiery girl with a lovely twist, beautiful, and deadly, and just a touch defiant. Until Scipio, their new escort, primly points out that copying last year's Victor's image is the worst possible strategy, it doesn't consciously occur to him what he's doing.

Still, it fits Leanne like a glove, and she goes for it without a hint of hesitation. The stylists come up with what's probably the least imaginative red dress ever for her interview, but Bellamy has a feeling she'll still rock it, given her natural boldness that shows in the way she holds herself. 

For once, Bellamy has a good feeling about all this. Until by the very end of training, Leanne gets into a fight with John Murphy from Three.

***

The tape looks horrible, and watching it five times on repeat does nothing to improve it, but Raven still hits "replay" for the sixth time before she sinks into her chair again. It's not like she has anything better to do at this point.

Even at first glance, she could tell John would snap a few seconds before he moved. He's been like this for days, tense muscles rigged to blow up at the slightest touch, his fear bringing out the worst in him. Raven doesn’t think it really mattered to him who he attacked at this point; all he needed was a body to collide with before he died.

It probably says something about her that she kind of hates him, but it’s not like she ended up here by being a wonderful person.

Still, as soon as John and Eleen return from their sessions with the Gamemakers, she pulls him on the side so that Wiress doesn’t have to.

“Do you have any idea what you just did?” she asks angrily. “They tell you specifically not to get into fights…”

“And what are they gonna do?” interrupts John, no hint of remorse on his face. “Kill me?”

“Yes, you moron! They _are_ going to kill you!”

All that earns her is a mocking glance, and okay, he's right, one chance in twenty four, but he's also so fucking wrong she wants to lash out, walk up to him and slap him so hard his ears ring. Maybe she really should've let Wiress handle this.

She tries to storm out, but her leg feels wobbly, and she stumbles before she reaches the door. It'd be stupid to hope John didn't notice.

***

It takes a while to calm Leanne down after her private session, and by the time the mandatory viewing starts, Bellamy feels weary to the bone. At this point, he could probably kill John Murphy with his bare hands, and seeing him pull a fucking nine to Leanne’s three doesn’t exactly help his temper.

Too bad he can’t work bloody murder between one sponsor meeting and another.

The whole Capitol is buzzing with excitement, drunk on training scores and interviews anticipation, and every single mentor is out there, working one angle or another. The club Bellamy ends up in is nothing special: dark in this tasteful, rich way he’s almost used to by now, a gloomy, dark cellar that smells of cinnamon and burning wax. He’s never seen a cellar so clean.

The dim lights give this place some illusion of privacy, but it’s not like Bellamy has a lot of sponsors crowding his nook after tonight’s performance. He needs a new interview strategy, and he needs it fast, or else Leanne will become the joke of the Games, curse him and his copycat tendencies. 

He doesn’t notice that he has company until a girl slides into a chair right next to his.

"Some party, huh?" she says without looking at him. "I don't think I'm trying nearly enough cocktails." 

“Is there something you need, Raven?” he asks curtly, trying very hard not to take his frustration out of her. It’s not like she coached John Murphy to ruin things for Leanne. It’s not her fault.

Like fuck it’s not.

“Look,” he tries after a beat. “You should go work your sponsors. I bet you have plenty.”

He can’t miss her fists curling and uncurling on the table, as if she was looking for something to do, and that’s what makes him turn his attention to her; to her stiff back and unnaturally tense muscles, as if…

“How is your leg?” he asks as soon as he makes the connection.

“I’ll be okay,” she replies quickly as she visibly tries to force her body to relax. “My preps said my brace would show under this skirt, so they bandaged it up instead. It takes some getting used to.”

Right.

It should be ridiculous that she has to hide this, given how she got a knife in her back on national television, but Bellamy has spent enough time in the Capitol to know exactly how this works. The audience likes what it likes, and if Raven wants to win any sponsors for her tributes, she’d better make herself look healthy.

Somehow he still finds it in himself to be angry with this unfairness, and with anger comes clarity he hasn't had in days. Suddenly he knows how to help her, and she's probably the only person he _can_ help right now, so he leans towards her without much thought.

“Come on,” he says loudly enough for the eavesdroppers to catch. “That was one cocktail too many, huh?”

He’s met with a pair of very angry eyes, but she can’t resist him now without causing a scene and drawing attention to her leg, so she lets him wrap her arm around his neck, and lead her back to the Center.

***

She’s boiling with fury by the time they’re back in the lobby, and the fact that her leg is killing her doesn’t do much to improve her temper.

“I don’t need your help,” she spits out as soon as they’re out of earshot.

“You were about to collapse.”

“And who made _you_ my mother?”

It’s the worst comparison ever, because her mother wouldn’t actually give a shit, but Raven doesn’t care. She’s so angry she can barely breathe, the weight of an unfinalized sponsor deal resting heavily on her chest as she lashes out, then stops mid-motion. Her first instinct is to go for the throat, but she’s not _there_ anymore, and in the real world, she doesn’t know how to strike without killing.

Bellamy steps back.

“You looked like you needed an out,” he says more softly, so she turns her back on him before he can make her reconsider not going for the throat.

“How are the sponsors?” asks Wiress as soon as Raven gets out of the elevator on the third floor.

“Intrigued,” she replies, letting herself limp to the nearest armchair. She’s never wearing this outfit ever again.

“This isn’t…” Wiress tries, then stammers. Raven waits patiently. “I mean… Not good.”

“Not good for John?”

Wiress nods, and this is all Raven needs from her to confirm her own suspicions. No one from Three has had such a high score ever since she remembers, and that means a big, fat target on John's back; an almost certain bloody murder just like Leanne’s low score means hunger, and cold, and thirst. The Gamemakers have ways of quietly making sure that troublesome tributes don’t make it out alive.

But still, Raven fights. She gets out of bed the next morning, and spends hour after hour coaching John and Eleen until her throat is raw. They go for hostile for him, funny for her, making them as different as possible, and it occurs to Raven that maybe this is a terrible idea; playing right into the Gamemakers’ hand instead of surprising them and making their lives harder.

Except that would also make the tributes’ lives harder, so Raven shuts up and does her job as best as she can.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. John and Eleen both die in the bloodbath; quick and pointless deaths she would’ve missed if her eyes weren’t glued to them ever since the feed went live. She’s pretty sure she hears Beetee inhale at the sight, and that it’s Wiress’ hand that’s clasped on her forearm like a vice, but not much registers, really.

She knows that she cries, later, curled up in the mentors' dining room, and that a pair of arms surrounds her with unexpected quietness, to ground her until she stops shaking. There is a hand moving up and down her spine, and a voice saying nothing specific, just a soothing hum somewhere near her ear, and it feels good enough that she doesn't care if it's an apology.

He goes away before she can thank him, and that means she can pretend this never happened.

***

Blight gives him a solemn nod when it’s time to go, and Bellamy knows there really is no point in delaying. Both Cone and Leanne are still alive, and he can’t mess this up for them.

So he dresses carefully in the outfit prepared by their stylist, a flashy black-and-orange thing matched with just a touch of stylish make-up Camilla has taught him to apply on his Victory Tour. Judging by his sponsor’s outfit the last time he saw her, she’d appreciate something a bit more subtle, but then, to his stylist, “subtle” usually meant “using only half the glitter,” so maybe he shouldn’t complain.

He’s supposed to meet the sponsor in a restaurant adjacent to a cozy little hotel that couldn’t be more obvious if it tried, and it’s so close he definitely could’ve walked there, except, of course, that’s absolutely out of question. Sometimes Bellamy wonders how the Capitol people give themselves time to think things over if they hardly ever walk anywhere.

On the other hand, maybe it really is better to not think about some things.

The girl is all charm when she greets him, cheerful and witty, but he can't resist thinking that there is a hint of something steely underneath her fancy dress. Or maybe he’s wrong. Maybe what he sees in her is simply the fact that she’s horny, and there is no deep meaning in how she rushes them through dinner in thirty minutes before she makes him an offer she knows he can’t refuse.

He expects her to go straight for his belt buckle as soon as the door closes behind them, but to his surprise, she pulls some funny little device out of her purse, and starts walking around the room. After she’s made a full circle, she nods to herself, satisfied, and takes a seat in one of the armchairs in the corner, her legs crossed as if she’s in a business meeting.

“Okay,” she says calmly. “The room isn’t bugged. Take a seat.”

He looks at her stunned, his fingers idiotically fiddling with one of the buttons of his shirt. The girl sighs impatiently.

“Relax,” she says seriously, looking him straight in the eye. “I’m not here for sex. Just to talk treason. Call me Clarke.”


	5. A nasty person to be around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next morning, Raven splashes her face with cold water, and tells herself to suck it up.

The next morning, Raven splashes her face with cold water, and tells herself to suck it up.

It would be easier if she had her work here – her real work, not that fancy workshop Beetee helped her set up as a talent. All those inventions, and flashes, and brilliance, those are Capitol things; back home, you fix fifty identical switches until your world shrinks to metal, and plastic, and screws, and then the next day you come back and fix some more like an automaton. Their schools in Three are so good that no one, not even the smartest ones groomed for more complex tasks, makes any mistakes about the pecking order.

Of course Raven hasn’t done anything resembling honest work in the last year, but just in this moment, she really misses the feeling.

By the time she gets to breakfast, it doesn’t even show that she feels spread a little bit thin, her bones stretched as she fumbles for something to do. She understands now why Wiress acted the way she did over the last year; understands the constant check-ups, and being treated like someone precious. This morning, somewhere between coffee and bagels, Raven learns that if she ever has a Victor, she won’t let them out of her sight for years and years after the Games, terrified by just how easily they could’ve been lost.

This is her first year as a Victor, and she has tons to learn about how things work on this side of the Games, so after a quick talk with Beetee, she goes back to Mentor’s Room, and offers Haymitch Abernathy some help. 

He doesn’t look too happy to see her, but that might just be because he’s a lot less drunk than she’d expect him to be. Foul mood or not, he doesn’t turn her down; he is quite alone here, his world shrunk to two scrawny tributes on two shiny screens, and a datapad he uses to organize his sponsor money, not that he has much of it to worry about. Soon it turns out that while Haymitch is a nasty person to be around, he’s also really good at his job, and a lot more fond of having an audience than he’d like to admit. 

It’s grounding, the way she watches the Games now: not really a viewer, and not a participant, either, but someone in a limbo; a person hanging between a screen and a phone, and learning how to work people as if they were electric mechanisms, delicate and very clever, the kind that you have to get right on the very first try.

Well, if Haymitch can do it, she is determined to learn as well.

At first, she doesn’t notice the funny looks other Victors give her, but soon enough they become so obvious she has trouble ignoring them. They’re worried about her, that much is clear, but there is also this subtle air of guilt that fills this place like poison until there is little room left for any kind of rational thought. Only now that she’s lost her first pair of tributes, the other mentors consider Raven to be fully one of their own, but she doesn’t stop to think what this means – she just works, works until her feelings start spilling out of her fingers and onto the floor, and then she works some more.

It’s way after sunset by the time Finnick Odair taps her on the shoulder, and asks if she’s had dinner already.

***

Bellamy got no more than four hours of sleep before Blight woke him at some ungodly hour to brainstorm sending Cone a sleeping bag, so he feels like crap even before he gets to the Mentors' Room.

He doesn’t have any more _special_ appointments with sponsors for now, so he and Blight agree to stick to their usual rhythm of twelve-hour shifts preceeded or followed by endless meetings with fans, journalists, and people with way too much money on their hands. Seven has quite a decent fanbase that grows or shrinks depending on a year, but this Arena has been good for them so far: an idyllic ancient village complete with twelve huts surrounding a wheat-decorated Cornucopia, and a nice, thick forest beyond the lush fields filled with food to the brim if only you know where to look. Leanne and Cone obviously do.

So Bellamy focuses on that, and builds a story so beautiful the Capitol can’t quite resist: a ghost of a boy moving through the woods on soundless feet, and a practical girl with a mind as sharp as a razor. In addition to making them some decent money, the narrative does good job at taking his mind off the bizarre encounter with his newest sponsor. He can't quite decide if Clarke Griffin is a mole or simply a fool, but when her donation shows up on Cone and Leanne's account first thing in the morning, he spends every last cent on those freaking blankets, because he isn't quite big enough to return it.

His first duty is to his tributes.

It's not like he's never thought of rebellion before. Most Victors do, one way or another, and then they sober up, and shut up about it until the next time they have way too much moonshine. All it takes are a few conversations to figure out that, even united, the Districts don't stand a chance against the Capitol, and anyway, it's not like the Victors are sort of a team of heroes ready to lead others into battle. In Bellamy's opinion, they're mostly a bunch of people who happened to discover just how good they are at strangulation around the age of sixteen, and now they're just trying to make the best of it. If given a choice, no one sane would trust them with as much as carving toothpicks, let alone with rebuilding the country.

***

Stepping out of the Mentor’s Room feels like entering another world, and Raven is grateful that Finnick stays mostly quiet for the entire walk to the nearby restaurant, letting her regain at least some semblance of mental equilibrium.

The place he chose for them is a cross between a regular restaurant and a cafeteria for the Games personnel. Raven has eaten here twice already: once with Wiress and Beetee, and once with a sponsor, so she knows more or less what to expect. It’s past dinner time in the Capitol, so most of the tables are empty as they walk in, but Finnick still manages to run into an acquaintance, who immediately catches Raven’s attention. He’s a quiet-looking guy, and surprisingly young given the uniform he’s wearing: a Gamemaker in training. He introduces himself as Wells Jaha, but despite the politeness in his tone, Raven can’t quite make herself look him in the eye. No matter how nice he is, she decides, the uniform speaks for itself.

Still, Finnick doesn’t seem to mind, and he exchanges a few words with Wells before he picks the table with his usual swagger that seems to immediately fill the whole place to the brim. Soon there is a waiter dancing around them, and Raven isn’t even sure what they order, she’s so focused on keeping up with is endless stream of Games gossip. She finds herself telling him a bit more than she meant to, but Finnick, as it turns out, has quite a gift for avoiding dangerous topics, so it’s not like she gets a chance to say anything truly dangerous.

After an hour of this relentless chitchat, she feels so tired she could cry, and when Finnick invites her for a walk around the nearby park, Raven is too weary to think of a good excuse.

The park is a beautiful place, filled with fountains, old trees, and winding paths perfect for hiding. But instead of losing himself in the rose bushes, Finnick steers them toward a huge open space in the middle, and the further they walk, the more he drags his feet, his voice growing softer and softer until he becomes the Finnick she knows from this year’s Tribute Parade, pensive and strangely sharp; not the self-assured Capitol darling, but a boy who knows exactly how unfair it is that he had to become so cautious and observant at sixteen.

By the time Raven realizes that he’s steering her away from the bugs that the Capitol sprinkled generously around the entire Games complex, it’s too late to avoid a serious conversation.

“How are you holding up?” he asks as soon as he halts in a spot he apparently judges safe.

Raven meets Finnick’s gaze for a second, and she feels her gorge rise once she realizes that she knows what he expects she’ll say. Self-loathing is built into being a Victor, and Raven knows the mantra already, despite being so new; _if only I was a better mentor,_ or worse still, _if only I was a better person_.

_She won’t apologize for not wanting to die._

“I hate them,” she forces herself to say through gritted teeth. “I want them all to die.”

Finnick gives her a grim smile, and just like that, all the remnants of his miracle child demeanor are gone; he looks older and strangely calm, and perfectly capable of murder, a Career to the bone.

“Good,” he says easily.

He doesn’t ask her to be his ally, but that’s okay. It’s not like she needs him to spell it out.


	6. Lack of pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leanne gets to the Final Eight, then dies a brutal, painful death that the cameras show in loving detail, lingering on her torn flesh and the terror she doesn’t bother to hide in her final moments. The Capitol, Bellamy can tell, is disappointed with her lack of pride.

Leanne gets to the Final Eight, then dies a brutal, painful death that the cameras show in loving detail, lingering on her torn flesh and the terror she doesn’t bother to hide in her final moments. The Capitol, Bellamy can tell, is disappointed with her lack of pride.

He doesn’t really register it when Ruby from One becomes the Victor, or at least he doesn’t register it the way he registered Finnick’s or Raven’s victory. This year, he feels less like a participant, and more like the viewer he was before his Games: so completely engrossed with what’s immediately around him that he can’t give Ruby more than a small fraction of his attention.

The face of Leanne’s mother shows briefly on the live feed from home, but it’s not what the audience wants; furious and livid instead of properly grief-stricken, what a family, a coward daughter and a harpy mother, we can’t have that at all.

Bellamy can imagine all too well what he’ll hear from her when he gets back to Seven, and he doesn’t look forward to it at all, even though he knows exactly how much he deserves it.

This year when they get on the train, he beats Blight to the car with coffins as if it meant something, and stays there for the whole ride, empty and guilt-stricken, but deeply convinced that this is something he owes Cone and Leanne. It’s the least he can do for them.

Seeing the families is as bad as he expected, quiet, and cold, and merciless, and even though Nate is, yet again, waiting for him at the station, he knows better than to step in and interrupt the furious grief pouring onto the platform floor. 

It’s horrid ten minutes to survive, but once they’re over, Bellamy feels the forest floor under his Capitol boots, and it’s like he can think again.

“I met some Capitol rebels,” he throws as soon as they’re far enough into the woods that he doesn’t need to worry about being overheard.

Nate actually snorts, then gives him a look from under this ridiculous knitted cap of his.

“Holy crap, you’re serious,” he says after a second of careful scrutiny. “What are they rebelling against, striped jackets?”

“They want to overthrow the government.”

And then he tells Nate all about Clarke Griffin. While he talks, he can feel his breath become deeper, as if his lungs were filling with leaves and pine needles, and the story settles softly in his head, letting him think, really think, for the first time in days.

"They want to use Victors to coordinate uprisings in districts."

"Because you're the only people who actually have contacts in various districts?"

Bellamy nods.

"Makes sense," says Nate pensively. "I mean, as far as an uprising plan can make sense at all. What did you say?"

"I told her to go fuck herself."

No, he didn't. He's way too smart to say something like this to a Capitol girl, and Nate knows that, too, so they understand each other perfectly.

"You think you were being bugged?" he asks matter-of-factly.

Bellamy bites his lip as he tries to come up with a good response. They don’t really talk about this sort of thing: expensive “dates” in discreet hotel rooms, and the subtlest of threats that come before and after. 

“I think she’s delusional,” he replies finally, and Nate, bless him, doesn’t push.

The silence goes heavy after that, because it’s not like Bellamy doesn’t know how things are in Seven. If you know where to go in the woods, you can talk freely about whatever the hell you please, so people do talk, then come back home with whispers, angrier and angrier over the year, until it will inevitably spill out like blood.

But that, Bellamy tells himself firmly, is absolutely none of his business.

(Octavia is sixteen.)

***

For the first few days after the Games, Raven’s mom remains stone sober. It’s actually quite funny, the way she’s trying too little too late. Raven almost lets it get to her once, but then she thinks better of it, and, predictably enough, things go back to normal after less than a week.

The winter is painfully uneventful, marked only by a stunning discovery that the phone Raven now has in her house allows her to make out-of-district calls. Excited, she calls Finnick Odair a few times, and listens to him prattle about storms and oysters in his best Capitol voice, but whenever she wants to call someone else, she hesitates. It’s not like she made friends, not really, and she’s truly terrible at small talk, so she spares herself the awkwardness.

Still, she isn’t really surprised when Bellamy Blake calls her in November.

It’s a correct conversation if there ever was any, smooth and perfectly polite, as befits an occasion that’s the opposite of private, but it leaves her strangely uplifted, as if he managed to say the exact right thing.

_What else do you have in that head of yours?_

Well, she should work on her talent anyway.

It’s a simple thing, really, the device she makes him: a reading lamp small enough to fit into his pocket, but giving proper, strong light that will be good for his eyes. Around January, she gets a sudden idea and takes it apart again, determined to fit in a sensor she used to toy with once upon a time. Synchronizing both circuits is a real challenge, but she is nothing if not stubborn, so by the end of the month, she has a lamp that picks up on how much light there is in the room, and adjusts itself accordingly. It leaves her calmer than she’s been in months.

There are other projects, of course, because Wiress and Beetee make sure she never spends more than a few days idle, but when she’s standing on the Reaping stage in the spring, the lamp sitting snugly in her pocket, it’s the only one she can think of from the top of her head.

When Lucrezia shows up to call out the names, it’s like someone flipped a switch in Raven’s head: her fists curl automatically, fingernails biting the soft skin of her palms, and she chokes, chokes on fear and chokes on fury, not again, please, not again.

But, of course, it does happen again. When Lucrezia calls for Kerra Green in a loud, clear voice, there is some commotion in the crowd, and a young man, unmistakably related to her, pushes to the front row, then grabs the barrier separating adults from teenagers, and stares at the stage with breathtaking, impotent horror.

Raven thinks she knows him from somewhere, and maybe she even does. Truth is, it doesn’t matter – either way, they’ll be seeing each other’s faces for years now, whenever they close their eyes.

The hour in the Justice Building is a whirlwind, and then Raven is boarding the train feeling utterly ridiculous about the lamp she’s cradling in her pocket. But it feels even more foolish to get rid of it now that she put so much work into it, so she decides not to. It’s a close call.

If she holds onto it later that night, when she’s struggling to fall asleep, no one ever knows.


	7. Some blockbuster released over the winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connie is the smartest tribute Bellamy’s had so far, so, logically, Sextus hates her as much as she hates his new design of a parade costume.
> 
> Warning for allusions to forced prostitution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I owe you an explanation as to why this took so freaking long :).
> 
> The thing is, I kind of wrote myself into a corner, and then I spent a good week trying to figure out whether I should have Wick in this fic (spoiler alert: I won't). When I finally figured it out, I tried to write quickly, and ended up rushing things. After some edits, I suddenly ended up with two chapters instead of one. The second one still needs some edit and an extra scene, but I'm hoping to be done with it tomorrow. The first one is, I hope, ready to post :). Thank you for your patience!

Connie is the smartest tribute Bellamy’s had so far, so, logically, Sextus hates her as much as she hates his new design of a parade costume.

The Reaping felt strange this year, calm and weirdly removed, and when Bellamy steps into the Remake Center, the feeling escalates until he’s moving like a doll. What used to be a tragedy now feels like a pesky, dull headache: arguments with his escort and stylists, outrageous costumes, pointless strategies, and the knowledge of how this is all sure to end. No wonder older mentors seem tired; tired, weary and numb, and almost beyond caring.

Somewhere between blush and lotion, he runs into Raven Reyes and Finnick Odair sitting together, thick as thieves, and he has the strangest feeling of familiarity that has no place here – not in this prep room, and not in the Capitol, so far away from the people he loves so much he once became a murderer just so he could see them again.

Or maybe there is nothing strange there. Maybe it’s just inertia driving him towards them, because who else is he supposed to talk to here?

Either way it would rude to ignore them, so Bellamy takes a moment to stop, and give Raven and Finnick a proper greeting. They move on the bench they’re occupying, and let him sit between them like a wedge, then pass him a suspiciously looking bag that turns out to be candy which, he hopes, has a lot less booze than it smells like.

On the other hand, maybe it’ll be easier to tune out Sextus’ nagging if he gets drunk enough.

“My stylist is an idiot with a tree fetish,” he announces, grabbing a piece of candy.

Raven snorts.

“Mine dreams about dressing tributes up as electric circuits, but he also thinks most people here don’t know what electric circuits look like,” she says with a dark grin he doesn’t remember her having a year ago. “Which reminds me...”

She reaches to her pocket, and Bellamy, surprised, holds out a hand before he can think about it. At first he has no idea what he’s looking at, but then he notices a cleverly placed piece of glass, and recognizes the device they talked about on the phone all those months ago. It’s surprisingly pretty for a piece of tech, simple and sleek, and there is something very Raven about it, too, though Bellamy can’t exactly pinpoint what it is.

It might just be that, if he’s able to compare Raven Reyes to a lamp, he should start reading less, and talking to people more.

Still, he thanks Raven for her gift, and as he slides it into his pocket, he finds, quite inexplicably, that he wants to lean and kiss her cheek like he would Harper’s.

He feels lighter when he gets up, and promises to get in touch with both of them after the parade, but truth is, he never does, engrossed in endless coaching and sponsor calls until his face starts hurting from smiling. This is good, he reminds himself, good to be calm, and good to be in control, and if only he plays this right, he’s going to bring a tribute home this year. Nothing else is important.

Training starts calmly, and when Connie announces, after the second day, that she wants an alliance with Kerra Green from Three, Bellamy is even more pleased than he thought he'd be. Tim is a lot less outgoing, and it looks like he'll be working alone, to Blight's great despair. Apparently there was some blockbuster released over the winter, and it made teams all the rage in Capitol. Most of the mentors, after being coached by their escorts on the train, are currently running around after each other almost as much as they're running after sponsors. It would be amusing if it wasn’t life and death.

As for Bellamy, he picks up the phone and makes a quick call to Raven, then lets himself feel relieved, briefly, that at least they will not be revisiting the John Murphy mess from last year. He makes a note in his calendar to let his escort know not to schedule him a sponsor meeting for immediately after breakfast, then he puts on his game face, and heads out into the city wearing his best Capitol outfit.

He can't quite stop thinking about Clarke Griffin and her offer, and about things he couldn't help but notice in Seven during the summer. There is this look Nate has been giving him ever since their walk home from the station – not constantly, not every day, but from time to time, as if he was just having random flashes of remembering that his best friend is a coward. Perhaps, he lets himself think as he fiddles with a cuff of his shirt, he should be doing work now; talking to other Victors, or trying to make contact with whoever Clarke’s boss is. 

But then Bellamy remembers Connie sleeping soundly in her room in the Training Center, so he pulls out a small hand mirror to make sure is eyeliner is fine, and steps out into the night.

He is calm, easy and suave, until in one of the clubs, he sees Finnick Odair entertaining a man he remembers from two years ago. If he feels his gorge rise even as he clenches his fists, his sudden surge of anger, he knows, has little to do with losing a sponsor.

***

This time, they are making Wiress spend the Games in Three, and while Raven was happy for her at first, right now, she mostly feels alone.

Kerra is quiet and focused, and determined to learn everything she can so that she can outsmart the Games. She even quizzes Beetee on the previous Arenas, as far back as he remembers, trying to establish something, anything – a tendency or even a pattern used by the Gamemakers. He answers her questions with a serious expression, but he can’t help his gaze sliding curiously towards Raven every now and then, and she tries to pretend she doesn’t know why, more for show than because she thinks she can fool him.

It’s not like she didn’t help Finn ask him the exact same questions once upon a time.

The night after training scores finds her in the small garden on the roof of the Center, passing a bottle of something foul with a very tired Bellamy Blake and a very silent Finnick Odair. It’s a weird night, or maybe it’s just Raven who feels weird; wired, and angry, and frozen in place, crushed by a weight she can’t even begin to carry. She has no reason to complain, really – with Kerra’s eight and Tyler’s seven, things are looking good, especially since Kerra’s ally got a decent score as well, and they’re bound to get a fair share of media attention as soon as the Games start.

(Kerra’s big brother, the one she saw at the Reaping, managed to call her tonight, right after the kids went to bed, and Raven doesn’t even want to know if he bribed the mayor or her own mother in order to get to the phone. It’s actually possible he didn’t have to bribe anyone – Monty Green seems like a nice sort of guy, calm and logical, and almost impossible to refuse. In no time at all, Raven found herself making him a promise she’s never made out loud before, and even though it’s not like she said anything new, she can feel the weight of her words resting at the back of her neck every time she closes her eyes.

“I will do everything I can to bring your sister home.”)

In a way, this drinking party they’re having doesn’t feel much different from strategy meetings. Bellamy has sketches of interview dresses in his breast pocket, because of course he does, and they discuss last details in Finnick’s earshot even though last year, Raven probably wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. For their girls, they’re going for a theme from some movie Lucrezia won’t shut up about, a book-savvy girl with a street-savvy girl together against the world. Connie probably read more books than all the other tributes combined, but it was enough to take one look at them together to cast them quite differently: make Connie’s haircut slightly more tomboyish, and smooth out Kerra’s braids to make her look like a Capitol schoolgirl. According to the drawings Bellamy got from his stylist, now they even have interview dresses to match their new personalities.

Around the second bottle, Finnick goes from silence to jarringly false joy, and when they try to talk him down, he gives them his best Capitol smile until Raven wants to shake him, smack him, something, anything, just so he takes his foul mood and goes away, and stops making her remember how impossible it is for both Kerra and Connie to live.

“What is it with you tonight?” she asks impatiently, irrationally offended that there is something about Finnick she doesn’t understand, and Bellamy moves a hand as if to stop her.

Before he can reach her, Finnick shakes his head.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters. “Look, I’m just gonna go, okay? It’s been… a long day.”

Raven has a sudden urge to follow him out: to hug him, or smack him, or maybe grab the other elevator, go to the third floor, and ask Wiress’ advice. Since this isn’t the perfect world, and things are how they are, she settles for grabbing an empty bottle, and smashing it hard into the force field around the roof.


	8. A job well done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the first morning of the Games, Bellamy wakes up if not excited, then at least hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have reached the moment of "if I edit this scene one more time, I will surely delete it." So, here it goes.

On the first morning of the Games, Bellamy wakes up if not excited, then at least hopeful.

He feels sore and tired in a good way, his neck tense after hours of squinting over a job well done. The alliance they have is a work of art, the best story the girls could’ve dreamed of, and their interviews were such a huge success that some fans are demanding for them to be allies even before any official alliance can be announced. There is absolutely nothing they could’ve done better.

(There is nothing, he tells himself as he rubs his neck, that he could’ve done for Finnick.)

Breakfast on the first morning of the Games is always a little awkward, especially for those of them who choose to share it in the lobby. When Bellamy comes down, Finnick is already there, pouring coffee for Mags even as he explains something to Raven. Whatever he’s trying to tell her, she’s clearly not buying it, and Bellamy inexplicably finds himself changing trajectory, and following Blight towards the couch occupied by Haymitch and Chaff. They’re drinking something suspicious that makes Bellamy’s stomach turn, but at least they’re not pretending that they’re not thinking about the Games.

He catches Raven’s eye as they’re all leaving for the Mentors’ Room, and they’re both walking with ease; calm, and grounded, and in control. If their jaws are clenched too tight for them to exchange reassuring smiles, neither is stupid enough to comment on it.

Raven is sitting right next to him when the Arena unfolds in front of their eyes, and she has a theory, he knows, one she’s been working on with Kerra to give the girls a better edge; something about nature, and ruins, and shelters. The Gamemakers, she claims, have been following a pattern for the last few years, and if he thinks about his Arena and hers, he has to admit that there is some truth to her theory, even if it feels way too District Three for him to be able to contribute a single thought. She seems so sure of her prediction that at first, she doesn’t even look at the Arena too closely.

Bellamy does.

He’s never seen so much open space in his life, and the lack of trees, any trees at all, is so alien it makes him queasy. He sees Connie catch Kerra’s eye during the countdown, and as the gong sounds, both girls change their agreed-upon plan and dash away from the Cornucopia, determined to put some distance between themselves and the Careers in this strange place where they can be seen even if they run for miles and miles. Raven tenses by Bellamy’s side as it hits her just how much their whole control and strategy just went to hell, but he can’t bear to look at her, can’t bear her fear and disappointment, not after last night, and not when he’s watching Connie run for her life.

It’s a team movie alright, except this year, the Careers are the team.

By the end of the day, the girls are together and alive, but without any food or water, or as much as a bush to hide their presence in this parched, sandy wasteland. It’s called a desert, or at least this is what Raven tells him between one sponsor call and another, but she might as well have said it in a different language, for all that it tells him. She doesn’t stop to explain, fixated on the idea to get Connie and Kerra some blankets, even though they aren’t even on their approved list of sponsors’ gifts. Bellamy, busy with his own calls, doesn’t bother to ask her why she keeps banging her head against the wall for something so unnecessary in such hot weather. He focuses on getting the girls something to drink instead, except the prices are exorbitant, with the price of water highest of all, and the Capitol loses interest quickly when all you have to show are two girls who haven’t done anything but run for the whole day.

It’s dusk by the time Raven gives up, muttering something about Beetee, but Bellamy, engrossed in his own work, barely acknowledges both her and the resignation obvious in her voice. Mentors spell each other all the time during the Games, and nights are slow, anyway, so there is no point for her to be here.

(He can’t really handle her being here.)

There is a look exchanged at one point during the late hours, something between Blight, and Haymitch, and Chaff that Bellamy quite misses, because when Blight comes up to him and taps him on the shoulder, it takes him a minute to understand what he’s being told.

“You should go to bed,” Blight repeats with rare patience. “There is… We’ll need you in the morning.”

Bellamy shoots him a look.

“Is there something about the Arena that you’re not telling me?” he asks, suspicious.

“Yes, and you’ll be grateful about this tomorrow. Go the hell to sleep, kid.”

Even as Bellamy walks across halls and lobbies in the Games complex, and glances, here and there, at strategically placed screens on which Claudius Templesmith makes nasty hints about temperatures dropping, he’s too tired to make the connection between this and Blight’s sudden generosity. By the time he hits seven on the elevator in the Training Center, he feels as if he was made of wool, soft-limbed and thick, and covered, it seems, in a layer of dust. He should be there with his tributes, should be watching, and thinking, and calling, but the reality is he can’t do that, not every night, no matter how many horrors this new Arena has prepared for them. As the elevator slowly brings him up he remembers, drowned in the seamlessly smooth movement, the numbness he felt at the start of the Games; numbness, and calm, and control. It brings a hollow laugh right up to his throat, because, really, he should’ve known better. With him, numbness is only ever silence before the storm.

So he steps into his bedroom on weary legs and with his shirt already half-unbuttoned, only to find Raven Reyes sitting restlessly at the edge of his bed.

Suddenly everything becomes too much: the Games and the sponsors, and children he moves around like chess pieces. If he’s lucky, one of them can one day become Finnick Odair, and vomit his guts out after a drunken party on the roof of the Center while Bellamy holds his hair back, and pretends to believe this is all because of too much booze. 

He looks at Raven, really looks at her, the way he’s been refusing to do all day, and in addition to the rage she always buzzes with, she has need written all over her as if she didn’t know just how much he can’t help her, or Finnick, or Connie. He feels anger rise inside him as if it was contagious, and for the first time in years he simply lets it be, lets it overflow weariness and fear, until Bellamy thinks he can see red spots flowing right in front of his eyes.

“Go away, Raven,” he says with strange clarity. “Whatever it is you want, I don’t… Look, we failed. I have nothing to say to you.”

She takes it like someone would a blow, and for a second he thinks she’ll hit him, too. This is the Raven he remembers from her Games, so much that he half-expects to see blood on her face when she steps closer to him. All vulnerability is gone from her features, and she is out for blood, but he can’t miss her fists curling painfully at her sides.

“Good,” she says in her Victor’s voice. “Not here to talk.”

And she pulls her shirt over her head.

It’s a challenge if he’s ever seen one, fiery eyes with a trembling chin, and he shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t, but Raven isn’t _his_ , not like Octavia, or Connie, or Tim, and maybe, just maybe, it would feel good to feel something.

(Maybe if he takes in her anger, she won’t burn their world to the ground.)

“I’m not here to hold your hand because you had a terrible day,” he says with a blank face. “You better go and find some nice boy who will.”

“No.”

She never breaks eye contact with him; not when she slides her pants down her legs, and not when she walks up to him boldly in nothing but her underwear. Her first kiss is deliberate, her hands and lips moving so slowly he could’ve stopped her at any moment if only he wanted. Instead he gets rid of his own shirt, and cups her head like he hasn’t done with anyone in ages; he feels her anger seep into him, and it’s good, so good, because for once he’s making something _better_.

It’s her rage he feels, he tells himself. Not his.


	9. Allies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven runs out before Bellamy can unscramble his brains enough to stop her.

Raven runs out before Bellamy can unscramble his brains enough to stop her.

It’s funny how easy it is to leave the Training Center now, when not long ago (could it be two years?) it seemed like a prison no one ever escaped. Apparently all it took was to kill her way through a field of people.

Now she tries to walk calmly like she belongs here, but she keeps catching her feet trying to keep up with her heartbeat. The last boy she slept with, here in this building, is long dead and buried, and honestly, she kind of expected doing it again would sting more, but instead she just feels panic about what she destroyed, typical Raven, unable to step away from her problems without craving a little bit of skin.

She wasn’t even planning on jumping his bones; she isn’t sure what she _was_ planning, really, but then he was angry, and she was angry, and with Wiress away and Finnick acting like a stranger, she needed someone to hold on to as her rage burned through her until she was hollow.

Now she steps out of the lift in the Training Center only to run into two familiar figures on the hall. Finnick Odair is without makeup, and he looks a fright; most of it is hangover, but there is also a shadow of something else, a stiffness in his bones that irks Raven so much that she wants to push him until he becomes himself again.

And maybe explains to her why he’s talking to Wells Jaha.

They both look slightly flustered when they see her, but Finnick doesn’t even try to hide two pieces of paper he hides in his pocket before he leans deliberately and places a soft kiss on Jaha’s cheek. His movements are so cold and studied that watching him makes Raven slightly nauseous, but she has no doubt that to the Capitol guards watching them on their screens everything must seem perfectly normal, a girl walking in on two boys who were just planning a tryst.

“Not watching the Games?” she asks, because she can think of nothing else to say.

“Mags is minding the screens. I was just heading up to take a nap, and then I decided to gather some, how would you say it? Extra intelligence.”

Jaha stares him down sternly.

“I wouldn’t give you additional information about the Arena even if I had it,” he says, and Raven is jolted by just how jarringly Capitol his accent is. “Have some spirit of fair play.”

“Aye, sir!” says Finnick with a mock salute. Raven doesn’t want to be around him, not when he’s like this, but she finds herself quite unable to leave. Finnick stays close to her even as Jaha says goodnight and steps out of the building.

“Where are you going?” he asks as soon as they’re alone. “I thought you weren’t going to replace Beetee until morning.”

“None of your business.”

“Right.”

He doesn’t ask anything after that; they have nothing to say to each other, and yet neither can seem to give up company. In the end, he simply walks her back to the Mentor’s Room, and takes his seat next to Mags as she takes hers next to Beetee. It’s an eerie night, silent and earnest, and as the temperature in the Arena drops a minute after horrific minute, even the Victors seem to be huddling together for warmth. The boy from Eight is the first to die at about two in the morning, and after that, others start dropping one after another as their mentors keep vigil for them. By dawn, six are dead.

(At around four Raven feels an arm snake around her, and then there is a hand sliding something small into her pocket, but she is annoyed enough, or maybe she has sense enough, to not even glance at Finnick Odair.)

Only when temperature is rising again does she manage to talk Beetee into stepping away to get some sleep. He can’t seem to let go, not until he’s made her promise to buy blankets, buy water, as much as she can, if only she can, and call him if anything terrible happens. Raven, energized by the feverish alertness that often follows a sleepless night, dives head first into deciphering Beetee’s financial calculations, grateful to have something to distract her from wanting to shake Finnick until he’s acting like himself again.

Bellamy shows up exactly half an hour later.

He doesn’t approach her directly; first, he walks over to Blight, and after a few heated whispers it becomes abundantly clear that he didn’t know, that no one last night explained desert to him, and that he isn’t particularly grateful to the older mentors for sparing him the night of horror.

He’s still seething when he drops on Beetee’s chair.

“They’re okay,” she tells him even though he can see it for himself: Connie and Kerra standing feebly on their legs and directing their faces toward the morning sun. They’re weakened by hunger, and cold, and thirst, but they’re alive, unquestionably alive, and maybe, maybe not all hope is lost yet.

“Six died from exposure overnight. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

Raven bites her lip. There are a few excuses she could make now; she didn’t think to tell him, or didn’t realize he didn’t know, but the truth is, she was so absorbed by her own misery and the urge to fix things that she quite forgot about him until she needed his comfort. 

She expects him to move away from her, but he doesn’t.

“Damn it, Raven, we’re allies. I’m useless to you if you don’t keep me posted.”

Allies.

Only now does she dare to look at him, and he looks annoyed alright, but there is shocking lack of resentment in his face, no abandonment or wounded pride. She thought his anger about the Arena was window dressing for yelling at her because of what she did in his room last night, but apparently not; it’s about being allies, and it’s been ages since someone called her that.

“Look,” she says instead of an apology she can’t quite muster. “I’ve been working all day yesterday to get enough money towards a blanket, because those nights aren’t getting any better, but they might not make it to the night if they don’t drink soon. Between the two of us…”

“...we have enough for one blanket or one bottle of water. No more.”

And so counting starts. Bellamy pulls up some medical volumes on his screen even as Raven makes another round of sponsor calls, both of them keeping a fearful eye on the price list that can change at any moment.

In the end, they buy a blanket, and Raven can see her hand shake as she presses the button announcing their decision to the Gamemakers. Back home, a boy called Monty Green is watching his sister catch a silver parachute, and Raven knows he’ll never forget it if she’s sent the wrong one.

When Blight and Beetee show up for the night shift, she’s so tired she doesn’t even try to protest when Bellamy takes her hand, and leads her not to her quarters, but all the way up to the roof of the Training Center.

The bottles they left here after their party with Finnick are gone now, but Bellamy still gives their bench a suspicious look before he rests his forearms on the barrier nearby. 

“Did that help? I mean, last night?” he asks when she stands next to him, and Raven feels herself relax a little, because there is no resentment in his voice, not even disappointment.

“No,” she answers honestly.

“Me neither.”

Maybe it’s because of how he held her after the bloodbath last year, or maybe she’s just tired, and he feels familiar after they’ve been _allies_ for a week now; either way, Raven turns slightly to face him, and after a slight nudge on his shoulder, he takes a hint. His arms come around her softly like a veil, and they both let themselves sink into it. Raven doesn’t really have it in her to let go now; it’s like Finn used to hold her, and how Wiress still does, sometimes. It feels so much like having a friend.

“What’s going on with Finnick?” she asks into his shoulder.

“Beetee didn’t tell you?”

“Not directly, no.”

She can feel him take a deep breath under her arms, and it starts getting awkward, talking to him when they’re so wrapped in one another, but she’s isn’t ready to give up the physical comfort just yet.

“Snow makes deals with some of the sponsors. He makes it look like we’re just having affairs. He hasn’t approached you?”

There is nothing crude or direct in his words, but there is no way in hell to misunderstand him. For a second, Raven feels chilled to the bone, but then familiar anger, the kind she hasn’t felt since she ran out last night settles in, burning through her guilt and making Finnick’s note heavy in her pocket, and suddenly it doesn’t matter anymore that she’s afraid.

“No. You?” she asks curtly.

“Not this year. Finnick has… a lot of fans.”

It doesn’t escape her that “not this year” doesn’t exactly mean “no”, but it seems pointless to call him out on his omission when he’s so tense, clearly expecting her question. 

There is nothing she can do for him, apart from getting angrier.


	10. The card from Finnick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end, it doesn’t really matter what they chose. Their girls die, and they die ugly before the night fully settles. Bellamy watches it with Raven on the screen placed in District Three sitting room. Finnick is with them this time, and, surprisingly, so are Cecelia and Seeder. This should be easier with others around, but when a knife goes into Connie’s throat, Bellamy doesn’t feel comforted at all. Instead, he is empty and helpless, his useless fists curling on the thick comforter that covers the couch he’s occupying with Raven and Seeder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Long time no see? Unfortunately I can't promise that I'll be more regular with updates now. Real life played a nasty trick on me, and it'll probably be a few weeks before I sort it out. I'll probably try to write here and there to get away from it sometimes, but let's see how it goes.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what they chose. Their girls die, and they die ugly before the night fully settles. Bellamy watches it with Raven on the screen placed in District Three sitting room. Finnick is with them this time, and, surprisingly, so are Cecelia and Seeder. This should be easier with others around, but when a knife goes into Connie’s throat, Bellamy doesn’t feel comforted at all. Instead, he is empty and helpless, his useless fists curling on the thick comforter that covers the couch he’s occupying with Raven and Seeder.

It’s only later that he notices the bruises Raven left with her fingernails when she was holding on to his arm way too tight.

They lose the boys that night, too, huddled quietly and unimpressively against the overwhelming cold, but this isn’t Bellamy’s tragedy this year; it’s Blight’s and it’s Beetee’s, and let them deal with it however they see fit.

He spends his night on the third floor, and after a short burst of energy that’s Raven’s fury for Kerra’s death, things between them settle into a silence neither has the nerve to break. They can’t seem to let go of each other, either, and in the end, he wakes up on the very same couch the next morning, still curled up around Raven. They have some eggs for breakfast, and it doesn’t even feel jarring anymore, the way life immediately rearranges itself after a tragedy.

Bellamy knows now that his numbness won’t last long, but he does his best to not think about what will come next. Unlike him, Raven is restless from the moment she wakes up, and he can see her fidget with her hand around her pocket as if it contained something terribly important.

“What’s up with you?” he asks because it’s going to nag him if he doesn’t.

But she only bites her lip like a very inept conspirator, and that’s enough to make a cold chill run down Bellamy’s back.

It’s not like he’s oblivious to things that some Victors whisper about in corners they hope aren’t too bugged, but he makes a point to never look too interested, never react or even listen. Uninvited, Clarke Griffin comes to his mind again, and for the first time it occurs to him that she must’ve approached others after he told her to get lost, must’ve thought, and plotted, and talked. 

“Raven,” he starts, but hesitates, unsure what he could even say to not get her into even more trouble.

In the end, he only tells her to take care of herself, then leaves to check up on Blight.

***

The card from Finnick turns out to be a list of hiding spots in Three: places where rebels used to hide weapons, and food, and sometimes even each other back in the Dark Days. Raven only dares to look at it on the train home, and she rolls her eyes a little at all the convenient explanations that make sure she knows she’s only supposed to check those places out, clear them if need be, but not stash them, not under any circumstances. And here she was, thinking about where to put her collection of riffles. Get a grip, Odair.

It feels weird to sleep in an empty bed again, even though hers was shared only for a few nights. Those were short Games, and Gem from One recovered almost immediately after he won, so now that Raven thinks about it, it has only been a week since she jumped Bellamy Blake’s bones in his seventh floor bedroom. But then he kept coming back, or she kept coming back, and somewhere in the meantime they even stopped needing sex for an excuse. It's a simple bargain they made, exchanging company without pressure and comfort without pity; the first simple thing to appear in Raven's life ever since her name fell out of the Reaping Ball.

Because things waiting for her in Three? Those aren't simple at all.

Kerra's brother is waiting at the train station quiet like a statue, and it makes Raven's skin crawl. She hates the quiet ones, hates their dry eyes and the tremor in their bones. Finn's mother, she remembers, oh, Finn's mother howled like a banshee, the most terrible sound Raven's ever heard, but when it was done, it felt like a clean wound, raw and shockingly red, and almost ready to heal. Compared to her, Monty Green looks unforgiving in his grief, cautious and observant, and ready to set something on fire.

So she comes up to him first.

"That was smart," he manages when he sees her. "The alliance, it... It was smart. I thought..."

Yeah, so did she.

She calls Bellamy later that night, after a dinner with her mother and an hour of tossing and turning in bed; calls without thinking how it'll scare his family to get a phone call late at night. But her other option was stepping outside and waking Wiress, and she isn't quite selfish enough for that; not even in her hunger for spending at least a few minutes with someone she doesn't hate.

(Someone who doesn't hate her.)

Bellamy sounds more breathless than sleepy, as if he was just laughing, and there is a girl's voice ringing behind him even as he says hello.

"Keep it down, O!" he throws back, then turns his attention back to Raven, a fleshless voice so much less warm than the body she woke up against just this morning.

Suddenly she has no idea what to say to him.

“Raven?”

“No, it’s nothing. I just wanted to…” What? Check up if he got home alright?

She can hear him hesitate on the other end of the line, as if he was making his way through a forest of things he isn’t allowed to say now that they’re sure to be bugged. And then he decides on the one thing she was expecting the least.

“Hey, want me to put you on speaker?” he asks lightly, almost indulgently. “My sister is here, and she’s been pestering me to introduce you.”

And then Raven is nodding frantically before she remembers that he can’t see her, and it doesn’t matter anymore that she can’t find words in her dry, dry throat. The Blakes fill her silence with ridiculous ease, and she clings to them until she falls asleep at her desk.

When Monty Green shows up the next morning, his eyes dry but red-rimmed, Raven finds it in herself to face him bravely, to answer his questions and explain her strategies. Somewhere between telling him about training schedules and interview prep, she becomes honest, more honest than she’s ever dared to be with the families. Kerra shouldn’t have died, but it wasn’t Raven who killer Kerra. And she won’t apologize for not wanting to die herself.

( _Octavia Blake,_ it rings in her head as she makes Monty her ally with openness that surprises even herself. _Octavia Blake is seventeen. Just like Finnick and Kerra._ )

A month later she shows Monty one of the hiding spots from Finnick’s note, and he inspects it grimly, fingers sliding against tables and shelves. This is more of a shelter than a supply depot, but, Raven knows it now, Monty Green is a communications specialist, sharp and brilliant, and even the mind-numbing job in a radio factory he’s been doing for the last two years doesn’t make him less conscious of signals, waves and frequencies. She wouldn’t interrupt him for the world.

“If you ever need headquarters, this is perfect. Well-hidden, but less interference than in a bunker. I mean, provided that you can get any tech, because right now, we’d have more luck trying to use pigeons and hedgehogs to carry messages for us.”

“That’s what I thought. As for tech, not our problem for now. People on top just want to know if they can use it.”

“What, those mysterious people on top you haven’t met? No thanks.”

Well, might as well add this to the list of things she has to fix.


	11. A torch of a girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sleeping alone again is strange for the first few nights, and then he gets used to it.

Sleeping alone again is strange for the first few nights, and then he gets used to it.

(He gets used to remembering: to how Raven’s head would rest on his arm, and how his knees would fit under hers before he placed his arm around her waist. He is now a person who falls asleep curled up around a shape he remakes from memory, but that’s okay. No one can see him anyway.)

Nate is quiet this year, way quieter than he ever used to be, but this is O’s last year in the Reaping, and so Bellamy, shameful as it is, doesn’t have much time for his friend.

Oh, she hates the attention he’s giving her; hates his crowding and his worry, and how all the things he’s done for her in the past years are stuck in his head, giving everything a slight tinge of resentment. _I’ve given up so much for you,_ he never says. _So now pay me back and stay safe._

By New Year, things at home are so tense that their mother steps in; finds him when he’s tidying up their stock of firewood, and gives him a piece of her mind.

“Bellamy, it’s not like you. What’s going on?”

He almost tells her, the way he used to when he was a boy; almost lays his worries in front of her, in hopes that she, of all people, would find him a solution that doesn’t make him want to choke on his own thoughts. 

Except she can’t, can she?

So he just promises to do better now, his apology so hollow he prays she doesn’t call him out on it. It’s not the first time in his life he wishes his mother wasn’t so damn perceptive, but this time, thankfully, she doesn’t have any frame of reference that would let her see right into him.

“Don’t be afraid,” she tells him once she has him in a tight hug, oblivious to how he’s now a person made of fear, _except this one girl, mom, a torch of a girl, and I take her in so that she doesn’t burn the world to the ground_. Right. That’s exactly what happens.

Aurora looks at him sharply when she pulls back, her face transformed from tender to serious.

“You can’t protect her from everything,” she says, and there is a ring in his voice that he doesn’t really want to understand.

( _You should still try,_ is what is ringing loudly in his head.)

So he tries so hard his hands almost bleed from how he's digging his fingernails into his palms, and then he tries some more. In March, he says one word too many, and it makes Octavia scream bloody murder; he'd never speak to her about the Games, so he stays quiet as she yells, stop this, stop this, damn it, you can't tell me what to do, why are you being an asshole.

Then he calls her naive, and she storms out to spend the next two days at Harper's. Their mother doesn't say a word to either of them.

When it's finally time to mount the Reaping stage, he's practically drunk on fear, two done, one to go, just one, he tells himself as he curls his hands in tight fists, only one, please let them survive this last one.

When Scipio reads the first name, he doesn’t even register what it is. The only thing he knows is that it sounds nothing like Octavia Blake.

***

Two pieces of paper are sitting in Raven’s pocket as she mounts the train, and just because of that, she’s so wired she can barely contain her excitement.

(A part of her excitement, she knows, has absolutely nothing to do with Finnick Odair and his plots, and it brings in a pang of guilt every time she looks at the pair of kids now under her wing. There is nothing, she knows, that should be making her happy about going back to the Capitol, but she can’t help it. Besides, it’s not like she can bring an end to the Games by acting like hers left her dead and empty.)

Monty doesn’t come to the station to say goodbye, and she knows he won’t be here, either, to greet her once she’s back.

Her tributes this year are shockingly young, thirteen and so scrawny there is no way to pass them as older. The girl, unfortunately named Fuse, is such a far cry from Kerra Green that at first, Raven wants to shake her, shake her right out of her slowness and fear, but then she takes a deep breath, and forces herself to think. So what if she loves Kerra now; learned to love her through months of watching her brother remember her? Her love, she knows, has no place here.

So she spends lunch planning strategies with Beetee, and by the time they arrive at the Capitol, she actually has something to say to the press.

She doesn’t know what to expect from the Arena this year; there is no convenient pattern to follow, no buddy movie or past design to latch her attention onto. All she can be sure of is that a few heads rolled after the fiasco of last year, deaths quiet and so, so bloodless. 

Right. Bloodless.

As soon as the preps are done with her, she’s pulled into an endless string of sponsor meetings.

***

Bellamy shows up at Raven’s door as soon as his tributes are asleep, because truth is, he has nowhere else to go after this hell of a year. Between pretending not to understand Nate’s silence, and the mind-numbing fear that rose in his throat every time he looked at O, he feels spread thin, banged up and ill-balanced; Bellamy Blake, a mentor, what a cosmic joke.

Thankfully Raven pulls him into a kiss as soon as she double checks that Beetee isn’t around.

“I missed you,” she mutters against his neck when he keeps her close, then pulls him down for another kiss, and he lets her, oh how he lets her; lets her lead him to her bedroom, and lets her slide her hands under his shirt, I missed you, I missed you, I missed you so very much.

He has to uncurl his fists to touch her; has to let out a breath before the next kiss, and relax his clenched jaw. Raven is not who he remembers, not a flame or a wisp of smoke, but simply a girl, wired and hungry. Maybe it’s good he didn’t remember her being so hungry.

Last year, he'd wait for her to make the first five steps, but now his head is swelling with months and months of things he couldn’t tell her, things he _still_ can’t tell her, not in this bugged room, and all that’s left for him is reaching for her waist, and pulling her shirt over her head.

She leans into his touch when he squeezes her breast, presses herself to him so closely he can feel knee brace digging into his flesh through layers of clothing. 

“Can we take it off?” he asks quietly. “Or would that…”

She doesn’t let him finish, just nods furiously and steps back towards the bed, take it off, take it off, I want to be naked, take it off.

_It’s Capitol. Take it off._

Her skin is smooth, and soft, and hairless, beauty base zero, but his train arrived so late he had no time for prep, and she claws into him as soon as he’s naked; traces tan lines on his arms, and hairs on his chest, and the scratch on his leg that he got helping mom in her garden last week. Once he moves down to work on the straps of her brace, her fingers close on his messy hair, and it looks like a hint, so instead of coming up for a kiss when he’s done, he hooks her heavy left leg over his shoulder, and rests his cheek against her thigh, waiting for her to nod.

But she pulls him up her body without hesitation, _later, later, now I want you inside,_ and he doesn’t argue, I missed you, I missed this, fuck, how I missed this.

They’re slow until they’re not, tender hands and sharp, sharp fingernails. Raven laughs when he sneaks his hand between them once he feels himself close, but she accepts his touch eagerly, and she scratches his scarless back until it looks real, one, two, and gone; there is this girl, a torch of a girl, and she takes in my fear so I don’t claw myself from inside out.

In the morning, when they’re both dressed, she kisses him deeply before he leaves for prep, and her hands slide into the back pockets of his pants as if dropping him a note, but he’s late already, and he doesn’t have time to check.


	12. Our people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Bellamy catches her after tribute parade, and asks her to walk with him in his fake-casual voice, at first Raven can't help but be excited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter just turned my entire outline upside down, because there was one thing I missed when I was writing Bellamy, and it just hit me in the face. Brb, redoing my outline...

When Bellamy catches her after tribute parade, and asks her to walk with him in his fake-casual voice, at first Raven can't help but be excited.

You see, she gets high on it: high on plotting; on action and on problems that aren't impossible to solve. When she showed Finnick her list of cleared out hiding spots in Three earlier today, he laughed like a wolf; like the ally she knows, not the victim she met last year.

"This is amazing," he said, grinning. "Give that Monty guy a kiss from me."

So now Raven misses Bellamy's tells as he's leading her through Capitol crowds towards a place he apparently thinks unbugged; misses the tension in his jaw and the awkwardness in his step, and the funny lilt in his voice as he struggles to make small talk. If she notices any discomfort on his part, she chalks it up to excitement equal to hers.

What she gets instead, however, is anger.

"What the fuck _were_ you thinking?" he whispers hotly once they stop walking. "Hiding... Are you out of your mind?"

It's like a whiplash, seeing this kind of passion turned against her for once. He won his Games through hand-in-hand combat, she remembers suddenly; remembers his beautiful, gentle hands curled into fists, and his breath coming heavy as he wiped blood off his face. Oh, the Capitol would love to watch him angry now.

"Are _you_ out of your mind?" she spits out. "You want to keep living like this? Like we have it so good? And what about our people?"

For a split second, he looks like she slapped him, but then there is a mask all over his face, and just like that Raven is speaking to a stranger.

"Keep me out of this," he hisses. "And tell Finnick to keep you out until he learns not to be fucking obvious. Do you know how many people will die when you get caught?"

When. Not if. When. And who the fuck made you our prophet?

So she storms away without a single word; doesn't plead or reason, doesn't even ask how he knew about Finnick.

She works her way through the night, keeping Beetee up as well, but that’s okay. It’s not like he sleeps much, anyway, and by dawn, they manage to pull strategies for Fuse and Timmy right out of their asses, since they don’t really have anything to go on. This isn’t the year for predicting Arenas or making flashy alliances, or for long hours of planning in easy companionship.

This isn't the year for high hopes, either. They will, Raven knows, come home with two small coffins, and no amount of strategy will ever fix that, not with a pair so scrawny and young. It's something everyone knows, but no one, not even Haymitch Abernathy with his tongue sharpened on a bottle, would ever say it, so neither does Raven.

But her bed is empty tonight, and she can’t bear to look at it, so she works as if she believed she actually had a shot.

***

He wastes three days being angry, and stubborn, and scared out of his mind; has all his meals with his tributes and Blight, meets his sponsors, then goes to bed like a good little soldier, and sleeps with no dreams. His eyes are bruised when he wakes up, but this is the Capitol, and some foundation usually solves all his problems right away.

Oh, he sees Raven in passing, but none of the places they frequent is fit for the things he wants to say, _I’m not a coward, you see, but I have people I’m responsible for, people I need to keep safe._

( _I am a coward,_ he wants to say. _It’s my cowardice that’s keeping my people alive._ )

So when he shows his face on the roof of the Training Center after the scores are announced, he fully expects Raven and Finnick to kick him out on the spot.

It's Finnick who says hi first, despite Raven's silence; extends a bottle, and acts as if nothing happened, as if he never knew anything happened. Raven by his side is like a lit fuse, ready to fight even though she knows she can’t, not here not now, and he wants to apologize to her for all the things he’s said, but also to shake her until she sees sense.

( _I’m a coward,_ he wants to say. _Let me keep you alive._ )

He is right, he knows he is, but it still makes him feel like shit – Raven’s gaze here, and Nate’s at home, and Finnick’s nod full of understanding – but Bellamy, you see, has a beautiful way of pushing all his guilt into anger until he’s nasty, and prickly, and harsh, his hands frightfully steady as he reaches for the bottle.

“Congrats on the training scores,” says Finnick casually, and Bellamy slips into the game right away.

“I wanted to talk to you about an alliance for Nick.”

They talk and drink like Careers, until Raven gets up furiously and leaves without as much as a nod towards Finnick, livid at having been ignored.

Serves her right.

Which is why Bellamy bangs on her door two hours later, much more sober than he’d ever want to admit, and whispers a thing or two that he will later blame on Finnick’s booze. Raven opens with a loud noise that’s sure to wake her tributes, but he doesn’t care about tributes now; all is anger has gone out of him, and he cares that Raven’s eyes are red-rimmed, her shoulders slumped, and her jaw set so hard it must hurt as she hisses at him, _what do you want, what the fuck do you have left to say?_

He should do what he came for; should pull her away from the Training Center now, take her to a safe spot, and try talking sense into her, try making her see that he’s right, damn it, he’s right about this, and no amount of wishful thinking will never make a rebellion happen. 

But it is equally true that no amount of wishful thinking will make Raven Reyes give up on a plot she’s been working on for a year if not longer, a plot fueled by rage and injustice, and executed with clumsy, clumsy fingers shaking because they’ve been left idle for way too long. This plot, he knows, could kill her, and he is not ready for Raven to die.

He has people, you see, people he has to protect at all cost, but Raven, he realizes with a shock, is his people now, ever since she touched him, or maybe ever since he watched her Arena go up in flames. There is this girl, a torch of a girl, and she swallows me whole until I’m made of nothing but fear.

(If I’m scared enough, if I’m good enough, maybe I can save everyone I’ve ever loved.)

So he just stands there empty-handed and nods, willing her to understand what he’s not allowed to say, not in this building, _yes I will, please, Raven, I will_.

“Can I come in?”

_I’m a coward. Don’t leave me here alone._


	13. A double date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy slips out quietly before dawn to take care of his tributes, and when Raven is getting dressed near her empty bed, she's irrationally annoyed at herself for letting him go with no explanation. Is he with them? Is he really with them? She really should’ve found a way to ask him those questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter alludes to Finnick Odair dealing with canon forced prostitution.

Bellamy slips out quietly before dawn to take care of his tributes, and when Raven is getting dressed near her empty bed, she's irrationally annoyed at herself for letting him go with no explanation. Is he with them? Is he really with them? She really should’ve found a way to ask him those questions.

And the scary part? Even if it’d turned out he wasn’t with the rebellion, she would’ve let him in anyway.

Bellamy not wanting to play treason with her feels like a betrayal, and Raven likes to think of herself as a person who doesn’t forgive betrayal, and certainly not this easily, a pair of sad eyes and a tipsy plea, _let me in, please, let me in_. She doesn’t fall for this shit with her mother, and she likes to think that she doesn’t fall for it with boys, either.

Except she let Bellamy right back into her bed, because she couldn’t bear to sleep in it when it was empty. It will be empty again soon enough, she tells herself firmly. She’ll leave the Capitol with two slightly oversized coffins, one under each hand, and she’ll have a whole year to sleep in an empty bed.

And that’s why, of course that’s why she pulled him inside like he was precious, kissed him and bit him, and didn’t stop him when he started moving down her body, in an attempt to apologize in the only way that’s safe in this building. He said things against her flesh, obscene and revealing things they’re not going to mention ever again, except maybe tonight, when he’s back here and she’s beyond caring.

But that’s for later.

Now Raven gets to work with her tributes, firmly ignoring the fact that Beetee is giving her a look, one of his trademark “Are you quite sure?” glances that usually make her stop and reconsider, except this time, it’s none of his business. If Wiress was in the Capitol now, that would be a different story, but while Raven loves Beetee, she doesn’t let him in on certain things, and she never has. If he wants to lecture anyone on bad coping mechanisms, he should go talk to his old friend Haymitch, and leave Raven alone with her fear of an empty bed.

Besides, they have work to do.

Fuse is too young for high heels, so at least this year Raven doesn’t have to go through the humiliation of showing them off as if Beetee _couldn’t possibly_ , he and his pair of healthy legs. Lucrezia tried to explain it once, shoes for men and shoes for women, as if everyone in Three didn’t wear overalls and work shoes most of the time, as if Beetee minded what he was putting on his feet, as if Lucrezia herself couldn’t… Well, nevermind. Not her problem this year.

Except it _is_ , except she hates interview prep so much that it chokes her, and hates it even more with every passing second. She’s supposed to be doing something this year, she’s supposed to be working on overthrowing this whole nightmare, and instead here she is, doing exactly what she’s told.

By the time Finnick catches her around dinner, she’s absolutely seething.

“I’ve got an invitation for you,” he says quietly, but clearly enough for the bugs to pick up. “It’s a double date.”

Just hearing _double date_ from him makes her skin crawl, but there is something calming in his expression, and that’s when Raven remembers that Finnick wouldn’t, not for the world. He might do whatever the president tells him, and he wouldn’t be able to protect her, should Snow pick her, too, this year, but he surely wouldn’t agree to deliver a message like that.

So this isn’t about sex. It’s about the rebellion.

“Wear something pretty,” she says easily, and Finnick flashes her a grin that confirms she understood him just right. “Can I bring a friend?”

“Why, Raven, is your boy into watching? Maybe next time.”

Well then. Just the two of them.

***

Sextus and Scipio round up on Bellamy as soon as he shows his face on the seventh floor, and since Blight isn’t the type to rush in and help when he can avoid it, it’s a hell of a morning.

Since the alliance with Finnick’s boy has been agreed on, he gets to work with Nick, Nick who is eighteen, and strong, and has such a good chance, if only Bellamy can pull his head out of his own ass, set aside his girl drama, and force himself to work with all he has.

It’s selfish, the way he gives his mind over to Nick, but lets his heart linger four floors below like he had the right to do that: forget the blood on his hands that he’s paying for year by year, and fall into the habit of wanting, of lingering and missing, and feeling responsible for one person too many.

Truth is that, all things considered, Bellamy won’t remember much from these Games: not the costumes, not the interview lines, not even the Arena, so tame in its horrors after what they went through last year. Everything about this year will be quite forgettable except for Raven, going back to Raven and fighting with Raven, caring for Raven and fearing for Raven, and apologizing to Raven with the kind of love he can’t quite muster for the kids in his care. He works for them, of course he does; works until his eyes are bloodshot and dry, and then works some more, but this one pair, he can’t love for being his responsibility. Weeks later, when dust settles and he looks back, he won’t be able to forgive himself for his heart not being big enough to fit them inside, but right now, he can’t help it.

The only thing he’ll remember about his female tribute is that her name wasn’t Octavia Blake, but Raven’s legs on his shoulders, oh, he’ll remember those so very well. 

Shame on him.

***

This time, Raven doesn’t let Claudia put her in anything ridiculous that prevents her from wearing her brace, and so when she reaches the hotel, Finnick at her arm, she’s still able to walk fairly well.

The “double date” turns out to be one of the weirdest dinners she’s ever had, Finnick on her right and Wells Jaha on her left, and a strange Capitol girl named Clarke eyeing her curiously from the opposite side of the table. Raven is used to this kind of curiosity, and to the fine mix of familiarity and disgust it brings into her throat, but she swallows it smoothly, the way she does with sponsors, and trusts Finnick that this whole meeting is about more than just entertaining assholes.

It feels strange, being lead to a hotel room without as much as an explanation, and it must feel worse than strange for Finnick, given how impenetrable his easy expression is, how studied and flawless, and absolutely haunting.

 _That’s it,_ she decides for the fifth time today. _I’m going to burn this city to the ground._

Clarke puts her finger on her lips when they enter the room, and checks it quickly with some sort of device Raven doesn’t recognize before she speaks. She doesn’t look curious any more, thank god for small mercies, but she’s still excited, and for that, Raven can’t blame her.

“We passed the data you collected further up command,” Clarke says in a no-nonsense voice she hasn’t used yet this evening. “It’s invaluable. Excellent work.”

“You went through all this trouble to pat us on the back?” asks Finnick sardonically. “Come on, Jaha, you could’ve done that in the Training Center.”

There is a look passing between them, something Raven doesn’t like even though she doesn’t fully understand it. And then it dawns on her: Jaha knows what Finnick does for Snow, and he’s done nothing about it, or maybe even he used it for the cause.

What kind of a person _is_ Wells Jaha, for Finnick to expect better of him even though he’s Capitol?

“There’s been quite enough patting,” says Jaha dryly. “We need you to contact other Victors. From other Districts. We can’t plausibly invite them here one by one.”

“Yeah? And how are we supposed to do that?” bristles Finnick. “I could slip Raven a note because no one watching the feed would think twice about me giving her a hug. Not sure how this trick would fly with Abernathy. I keep telling you, you have to give us a safe place to talk.”

Raven looks at the boys, from one to the other, then locks her gaze with Clarke. And gets an idea.

“Hold on,” she says before Jaha can reply. “Can I see that device?”


	14. A signature lamp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It would be so nice, wouldn’t it? If they could get a closure, talk things out and explain, maybe even make a ridiculous promise or five. But that’s not what happens. They can’t keep looking for places to talk, not without making it look suspicious, and Bellamy is terrified that after the fight they had in the park, someone is definitely keeping an eye on them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is short, and a bit of a filler, I know. I was going to include the next Reaping in it as well, but then I realized that my timeline for that day was off, and I need to push it into the next chapter to deal with it properly. So if it's any consolation, the next chapter will probably be longer.

It would be so nice, wouldn’t it? If they could get a closure, talk things out and explain, maybe even make a ridiculous promise or five. But that’s not what happens. They can’t keep looking for places to talk, not without making it look suspicious, and Bellamy is terrified that after the fight they had in the park, someone is definitely keeping an eye on them.

The only thing that happens is, on the morning of the interviews, he finds another slip of paper in his back pocket, and this time, he doesn’t even read it – just takes Raven’s face in his hands, and kisses away his fear.

All they have left is taking each other to bed, so that’s exactly what they do: hold each other through the bloodbath, through betrayals, and traps, and mutts. On the night when Severus from Two becomes a Victor, Bellamy, eyes dry, falls asleep with his face on Raven’s stomach, her fingers stroking his hair with quiet anger, so frightfully steady that for a moment, he lets himself believe that she can do this; overthrow the Capitol and make a bright, new world, a place where he can love her, and Octavia, and Finnick, and Nate, all at the same time.

It’s the only night they don’t spend naked.

By the time Bellamy boards the train back home, he feels spread so thin he can’t wait to collapse and sleep, sleep for twenty four hours straight. Raven is a demanding bedmate, thirsty and prickly, and so painfully beautiful he couldn’t resist her silent challenges, show me you love me, show me you love me for real, your words mean nothing here. Show me.

He reads her note the next morning, when he’s alone in the woods, and it’s a love letter if he’s ever seen any. Treason is spelled out clearly in Raven’s square, bold handwriting, a list of caches, of shelters and bunkers, and as months roll by, he checks them out because he decides that it can’t hurt; decides that intel is just intel, and a small enough risk that he can take for love.

(He never shows Raven’s note to Nate, and tells himself that it’s because this is private. Truth is, it’s just another thing that he does for love.)

***

It takes Raven and Monty a month to carefully take apart Clarke Griffin’s device, and two more until they’ve made a functional copy. Only then, real fun starts.

Going back to Monty after the Games isn’t easy, and even in the safety of their favorite shelter, now dubbed Headquarters for shorthand, Raven often finds herself biting her lip as she struggles to find the right words. She likes to think that she learns something; picks up crumbs of wisdom about family, and risk, and about boys who have sisters. Truth is, she mostly learns about Monty himself: about how quick he can be when he’s quiet, and how much he can see when you think he’s not looking. Under his easy exterior, there is a hint of something unforgiving that reminds Raven of Finnick, but that’s not all. Monty, she learns this year, is a funny drunk; he can dig up spare parts from places she’d never thought to check, and on bad days, he dives into work so deeply forgets to eat.

One day, as they’re working hand in hand, Raven promises herself that if he ever talks about Kerra again, she’ll tell him about Finn.

For now, though, they have bigger things to talk about. Machine parts have always been under strict control in Three, and anyone who gets caught with anything they can’t immediately prove belongs to a lamp or a television set is sure to be in a lot of trouble. Raven, of course, could get away with simply ordering all kinds of shit, since inventing is her talent, except then she’d have to actually work on the device in her home workshop, and that, they both agree, is out of the question. The person directly monitoring the Victors’ Village might be an idiot who doesn’t know their elbow from their ass. The person double-checking the camera feed in the Capitol? Not so much.

On the bright side, stripping Clarke’s gizmo and learning how it ticks doesn’t require any extra parts, and so they can start right away. Which, good. Because they’re short on time. If this was simply about making copies, Raven could work it out on her own in a few months, even given her fairly rudimentary knowledge about waves and frequencies. But that’s not what they want. This device can only checked whether a place is bugged or not. They want it to also be able to jam any signals that it finds.

“And discreetly,” adds Monty as he hovers over their sketches. “If we just turn off the bugs, someone from security will come running in under thirty seconds. We need them to think that their bugs still work.”

That in itself is a problem they spend weeks on. The receiver in Clarke’s device is a goldmine of knowledge, and Monty spends weeks on it, charmed and curious, until he draws Raven a whole series of Capitol bugs based just on how the device picks them up, on its programing and its hardware, and Raven grins before she bumps her shoulder into his.

“Finnick is right, I should kiss you,” she says delighted, then laughs when Monty raises his eyebrows mockingly.

“Can I finish this first?” he asks, holding up the last sketch.

There's never been a hint of anything like this between them; Monty, Raven knows, has someone in town, and as for her... She isn't exactly sure what she has.

Not that it matters now.

In the end, their solution is as simple as it is risky: they build their invention in her workshop in Victors' Village, and they build it into a freaking reading lamp modelled after the pocket version she once made for Bellamy, as if that one had only been a small prototype. If anyone catches on what they’re really doing, they’ll be dead for sure, but it’s better than risking Monty stealing too many parts from work, or Raven smuggling them into the Headquarters.

“It’s a signature lamp,” they tell the bugs. “Let’s give it a switch that makes it shine red.”

Because muting whole conversations is suspicious, but if they just screw up the signal for a few seconds at the time, it’ll sound like pauses. Hesitations. Tiny nuggets of information exchanged under the protection of a small button that makes everything look like it’s basking in flames.


	15. Head twisted by fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy manages to check out maybe a third of the hiding spots on Raven's list. And given the size of Seven, he's happy he got that much.

Bellamy manages to check out maybe a third of the hiding spots on Raven's list. And given the size of Seven, he's happy he got that much.

Well, happy is a big word.

It's funny how you can get used to constant fear, to looking over your shoulder and listening to footsteps, and funny how, this year, he gets to blame his terror on Raven and on Finnick instead of Snow. He tries not to, of course, because he was always so good at drawing lines; here is Octavia, and Nate, and Harper, and here are the prices he paid to keep them safe. So now he draws another line, between things he does and people he does them for, and hopes, prays, that it's enough.

If he starts hating them, how is he supposed to find people to love next?

So as soon as he arrives at the Capitol, he shows up at Raven's like a good little soldier, and kisses her with all he has. She looks ready to explode under his fingertips, charged, and hungry, and close, just the girl he’s so used to missing, so it ends the way it usually does, not that Bellamy is complaining.

He likes to think, in his head twisted by fear, that the eagerness in her is at least part due to him, and not just the piece of paper in his pocket.

***

Beetee took away Raven's lamp as soon as they got on the train.

"Oh, I'd like to... see the design," he told the bugs in a very Beetee voice. "It's very interesting."

And she had to give it to him, because she couldn’t think of an excuse not to – what would be more natural for Beetee, her mentor, to be curious about her newest invention? It’s not like she worked with him a lot this year. It’s not like she ever said a word about her plans.

So when he returns the lamp to her the next morning, she’s nervously searching his face for signs that he caught her red-handed; for disapproval, or fear, or recognition. Instead, she gets a warm smile, and a compliment that makes a cold shiver run down her spine.

“It’s wonderful,” Beetee tells her, then holds her gaze. “ _The cameras_ are going to love it.”

The cameras. Fuck.

Of course they had to make some rookie mistake in the midst of all their scheming; because Monty couldn’t have known how many hidden cameras there are in the Capitol, and Raven got so excited about cheating the bugs she didn’t think how it would look: sound always going out whenever the cameras show a curious red light.

And the worst part is, she can’t even ask Beetee how he knew what to look for.

She also can’t reach Finnick; hasn’t been able to since they arrived last night, not that she did a lot of searching after the train from Seven rolled on the station. Mr Odair, she’s told coldly by one of the Capitol attendants, is with his tributes. Implied: exactly where Raven should be.

She actually has a strong pair this year, a girl named Millie who can do miracles with ropes and levers, and brave, hard-working boy called Shawn. But her head is only partly in the game when she tries to come up with a strategy for them over breakfast, and she only manages to focus under Beetee’s stern gaze, her mind running away to the lamp, always to the lamp, but also something else; a thought that’s been there for months, gleefully ignored as Raven focused on her pet project.

( _Are you with us?_ she was going to ask, the lamp glowing bright red. _Are you_ really _with us?_ )

Shockingly, she finds herself wanting to call Monty, and talk about the lamp, and her tributes, and Beetee; hell, at this point, she’d be happy to talk to Monty about the weather. This is what missing family must feel like – a hollow place in her chest, not really painful, but chafing in a quiet, annoying way, like a tooth that doesn’t really hurt that much. She needs to remember this, she tells herself firmly. Monty will have a hoot if she tells him she compared him to a hurting tooth.

She has Monty now, she has Bellamy, Wiress and Finnick. How did Raven Reyes, of all people, end up to have so much family?

Breakfast ends without them figuring out anything specific, not that there won’t be time, after the parade, but Beetee still isn’t happy with her, and so she tries to do better; to keep up with the stylists’ ideas, make a plan for training, and look for possible allies. She liked the girl from Eleven, watching the Reaping recaps, and so as the kids get into prep, she goes to talk to Seeder.

“Beetee said you were working on something,” is what Seeder tells her as a hello, and it sounds like such a perfect pleasantry, smooth and kind, the most Seeder thing to say. Except Beetee never opens his mouth unless he has an agenda, and he’s not in the habit of just chitchatting with Seeder.

“It’s just a trinket,” says Raven, her throat suddenly tight.

“I’d love to borrow it for a friend.”

***

Raven finds him in one of the sponsor parties after the parade, when he’s busy charming the socks off Capitol ladies together with Finnick, and just seeing her here, having her catch him flirting, gives him a brand new surge of guilt. It’s idiotic, of course it’s idiotic, because Raven knows, Raven understands, and she’s done the same damn thing many a time.

Still.

She waves at them happily, and she looks perfect, flawless in a Capitol way: smooth and sleek and glittering, young and healthy and carefree. One glance is enough for Bellamy to realize that she’s absolutely terrified.

It takes him a while before he can ask her for a dance without making the sponsors suspicious. It’s Finnick, actually, who makes his way to her first, and maybe that’s a good thing. Finnick has been wired all day today, full of a weird kind of energy he doesn’t usually have, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. He has a strong contender this year, someone he can actually hope to bring home, and it fills him with restless hope bordering on despair. Let him talk to Raven. Maybe they can help each other out.

In the meantime, Bellamy focuses on getting money for Daisy, knowing all too well it won’t help her much. Daisy has an attitude problem, or, if you want to quote Blight: she’s fucking suicidal. But it’s not like this absolves Bellamy from trying, so try he does, even as he keeps Raven in the corner of her eye. Raven, he knows, doesn’t have a family apart from a mother, which is complicated; she doesn’t have friends she’d talk about much, and more often than not, she just keeps to herself. There is nothing in the whole world that could make her so scared. Apart from the risk of discovery.

So when he finally gets to dance with her, he doesn’t waste time, and pulls her close as soon as the music is loud enough for his words to drown in.

“What happened?” he asks quickly. _What did you do? What the hell did you do?_

“I don’t know yet.”

That’s ominous enough for a cold shiver to run down Bellamy’s spine, old and familiar, or maybe he’s just become a beacon picking up on the fear that’s oozing from Raven right through her ridiculous Capitol dress.

“What can I do?”

She pulls back a bit to look at him like he said something important, or maybe helped her figure out a puzzle, and she tightens the grip she has on his shoulders. He’d give anything right now for ten minutes of an actual honest conversation, something beyond glances, and touches, and single words stolen from the bugs, but that’s not something that will happen, not now and not ever, so here he is: dancing clumsily, and hugging her to him as hard as he can. Trying to show her he loves her, while making it look like they’re just holding each other up, drunk.

Halfway through the song, Raven leans forward and rests her forehead on his shoulder, but Bellamy isn’t quite sure what it means.


	16. Love for true friendship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She spends the night in terror, curled into Bellamy like he's an anchor, and for once, she’s scared enough it doesn’t really matter to her where he stands, or how genuine a rebel he really is. Bellamy’s loyalty, she understands now, is to people, not to causes. And she’s one of his people, she must be, or else why would he be here with her, when things obviously went to hell, and he must know she fears getting caught?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what? I managed to actually outline the whole plot until the end, I know how many chapters I have left, IT WON'T BE LONG BEFORE I FINISH NOW!

She spends the night in terror, curled into Bellamy like he's an anchor, and for once, she’s scared enough it doesn’t really matter to her where he stands, or how genuine a rebel he really is. Bellamy’s loyalty, she understands now, is to people, not to causes. And she’s one of his people, she must be, or else why would he be here with her, when things obviously went to hell, and he must know she fears getting caught?

She knows Beetee and Seeder wouldn't sell her out, not for anything – not unless they thought she's putting both tributes and other Victors in danger. 

Which, to be fair, she is.

But the other shoe doesn't drop the next morning. Nor the next.

***

Finnick and Mags have a Chinese wall this year. Both their tributes are such strong favorites it really doesn't make any sense to work with them together, he explains, because it's worse for them to be in any way similar.

"They're childhood friends," he explains later, quietly, his eyes fixed on the Capitol lights they're watching from the roof. "So the longer we keep them together, the worse it'll be. Can you help me brainstorm?"

Bellamy never asks him how Reaping works in Four, and what kind of volunteering system they have that pits best friends against each other, or puts kids in the Arena at fourteen. He doesn't ask why Raven isn't sorting this out with them, either. Apparently he's a pile of unasked questions this year, and anyway, he so needs a break from trying to work with Daisy's temper. So he agrees to help Finnick with Luke.

Still, despite the fact that he understands Finnick’s strategy, the whole setup rubs him the wrong way: hiding a friendship from the audience to make things smooth and easy; come and sponsor Four, and you’ll sleep so well at night. Bellamy is no stranger to selling things that shouldn’t be sold, and the mentor in him agrees with Finnick and Mags, but it still feels like taking things a step too far, as if sparing the Capitol the sight of Annie and Luke’s heartache absolved them, somehow, of their responsibility for killing twenty three children on live television.

He’s pretty sure that Finnick is thinking about all this anyway, so he keeps his mouth shut, and gets to work. They want to make Luke different from a typical Career boy, and so they settle on cheeky, but in a cute and vaguely humble way; someone observant and clever, so sure of his strength he doesn’t have to emphasize it. His persona is a masterpiece if Bellamy says so himself; a lot better than what Daisy let him come up for her.

(“You think if you save one of us, it’s gonna make you feel better?” she throws in his face after the training scores, and it makes him stop short, eyes wide open. In the morning, he spends two hours fighting with Sextus over interview costumes, but when he comes back to Daisy carrying the simple black dress she asked for, she gives him a look that makes it all worth it.)

In the end, it’s all for nothing, their relentless strategizing – the kids say a few words too many in the interviews, and here it goes, the Capitol exploding with their love for true friendship on the night after the interviews. They even dig up the recap from Raven’s Games, and Bellamy watches in silent horror how his Charlotte picks up a knife, and makes it fly in a smooth, smooth arch, all the way to between Finn Collins’ ribs. Seventeen-year-old Raven looks at her friend’s face on the sky, all while twenty-one-year-old Raven goes pale under her Capitol makeup, then leaves without a word.

When he knocks on her door that night, she pretends to be asleep.

***

Raven still feels bile in her mouth a few days after the interviews, even though she dares herself to come to Bellamy’s bed the very next night. She won’t, she reminds herself, apologize for being alive, and so she lays Finn’s ghost to rest yet again, washes her face, and kisses Bellamy until her skin isn’t numb anymore; lets him lick her wide open, and take away her sadness and fear for a few luxuriously long minutes.

Then she goes back to work.

Millie is still in the Games, and allied with Seeder’s tribute the way Raven had planned, but there is something fishy about the Arena, and Raven can’t quite figure it out. There aren’t nearly enough traps out there, not nearly enough mutts and horrors, and even though the commentators keep gushing over “minimalistic design”, Raven doesn’t buy it.

“They plan this shit years ahead,” she tells Bellamy as they stare at the monitors together. “And okay, that desert was a flop, and hugely unpopular, but it’s only been two years. I was expecting heavily rigged Arenas for at least two, three more years. I don’t like this.”

Since there is nothing she can do about her rebellion now, she focuses her whole energy on Millie, and it distracts her from her fear enough that she actually manages to catch a few hours of sleep every now and then. Maybe Seeder just borrowed it without knowing what it does? Maybe she’s reading too much into things? Maybe there is a perfectly logical explanation? But before she can find out what it is, exactly, she distracts herself with being suspicious about the dam.

It’s not like it isn’t obvious what dams can do, and after two days of pondering, Raven decides to test her theory. So she makes an official request to the Gamemakers to make floatation belts available as sponsor gifts.

It gets her summoned to Gamemaker Jaha in under an hour.

“That dam’s gonna break,” she tells Bellamy, who, having lost his tribute at the Cornucopia, now divides his time between her and Finnick. “Buy me that belt. As soon as I pull it out of his throat and they become available, buy me the belt. Millie can’t swim.”

She’s never met Gamemaker Jaha before, but he expects him to be a lot like Wells, except older and evil. Expects someone calm and composed, and possible to reason with, distant in a cold, calculated way. But when she actually steps to his office, she doesn’t really get to have the first impression of him. She’s too busy being scared out of her head.

The lamp she gave to Seeder is right there, in the middle of Jaha’s desk.

“Ms Reyes,” he says smoothly when she closes the door behind her. “Please, take a seat.” Then he clicks the red light on. “Wells told me about you.”

She waits for him to click it back off before she walks up to his desk, completely stunned.

“Sir?”

“There seems to be some trouble with your sponsor gift request, Ms Reyes, but I’m afraid you were brought here too soon, and I don’t have all the paperwork sorted out yet. If you could be patient for a second.” Click. “My son, you see, is a hothead who decided we needed to start bringing in young Victors, and he went behind my back to do so. Which shows I should’ve listened to him in the first place. This lamp is brilliant, Ms Reyes, despite the glitch regarding cameras, and thankfully there are none in this office, so it’s exactly what I needed. You’re quite a prodigy, if I may say so. Beetee was right. Now, I’m going to refuse your gift request now, and give you some lengthy explanation in writing. One of the pages has the time and address of our meeting that you’re invited to. Bring Mr Odair and Mr Blake. Do you have any questions before I turn the bugs back on?”

“What the hell is going on here?” she asks, stunned into bluntness, too surprised to be scared. Jaha? _Gamemaker_ Jaha? No way in hell.

“Why, Ms Reyes,” he says slowly and finally meets her gaze, then smiles slightly. “We’re overthrowing the government.”


	17. Welcome to the club, Annie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven comes back from Jaha’s office right in time to see how the boy from Two picks up his sword, and takes Luke’s head clean off.

Raven comes back from Jaha’s office right in time to see how the boy from Two picks up his sword, and takes Luke’s head clean off. She’s so quiet Bellamy completely misses her walking in, his eyes focused not even on Luke or Finnick, but on Mags’ girl Annie, the fear she’s oozing so familiar she immediately grabs his attention. She’s the picture of absolute horror, how very un-Career of her, and Claudius Templesmith in his live commentary is already writing her off, a weak link, what a weak link, while Enobaria swears loudly, and the boy from Two raises his bloodied sword, grinning like a wolf.

(He killed Daisy, too, killed her with his bare hands right at the Cornucopia, and Bellamy would judge him, he really would, except once upon a time, he’d killed five people in the very same way.)

There is another curse coming from Chaff, and that makes Bellamy turn his head and finally notice both Finnick and Raven. He expects Finnick to look shaken up, but Raven’s pale face takes him by surprise, makes him reach and touch her hand, the one that isn’t clutching a suspicious stack of papers with the Games’ logo.

“You okay? The floatation belts didn’t show up yet.”

“They won’t.”

They’re grasping for straws here, trying for casual chat to bury the horror they just witnessed, bury it so they don’t set this fucking place on fire; a boy’s head rolling comically on the grass as Annie screams, screams and covers her mouth and looks at the camera with wild eyes, _I wasn’t trained for this, I was trained for so much, but I wasn’t trained for this_.

Welcome to the club, Annie.

***

Luke’s death is a good excuse to pull Bellamy and Finnick away from the screens come late evening, and Raven does all in her power to think of it in terms of pure strategy. There is a trap here, she knows, a trap the Games are pulling her into because she’s less dangerous when she thinks of herself like this: she’s a mentor responsible for a pair of kids, and so it’s ghoulish of her, using Finnick losing a tribute as cover-up for conspiracy. She has to tell herself very clearly that Luke wouldn’t mind, Luke would want her to, Luke would gladly see them plotting to get rid of the very Games that killed him.

 _Would he now?_ she tries not to think. _How would you know? You don’t even remember his last name._

Seeing his beheading on the screens at every corner does nothing to help her anguish, but Raven is good enough at putting on a brave face to power through. Don’t get sad. Get angry. For Luke.

(For Finn. For Finn, damn it, and not because the thought of revenge makes her feel hot all over.)

She refuses to explain to the boys where they’re going, but they still follow her; Finnick indifferently, Bellamy trustingly. Jaha’s instructions are clear enough: find a night club in one of the less illustrious parts of the Capitol, and mingle for an hour before disappearing quietly in one of the above rooms. The place is dark enough that no one recognizes them from TV, and anyway, who’d expect to find three young Victors drinking cheap beer in a dingy bar?

“Clearly we should’ve come here sooner,” says Finnick as he looks around. “Do we have an ulterior motive? Or are we just getting shitfaced far away from the cameras?”

“You get shitfaced, the cameras will appear,” Bellamy points out dryly. Seeing him like this, all casual clothes and no makeup, makes Raven feel strangely intimate; he usually looks like this only when they’re in their quarters, alone or with a few friends. Outside, he makes sure to be as flashy and flamboyant as he’s expected, half-unbuttoned shirts and glittery eyeliners, but tonight he looks almost modest; a modest rebel boy in a simple, dark button-down he might actually have bought himself instead of relying on his idiot stylist.

“How did you ever know about this place?”

It’s only once Bellamy asks his question that Raven realizes she’s been staring at him stupidly for a minute or two, and she makes herself focus again, focus on the big picture. She didn’t come here to drink and stare at her… whoever he is to her.

(Co-conspirator? Brother-in-arms? Friend?)

“Heard about it from a friend. Wanna see what’s upstairs?”

She can tell Finnick is about to reply with a threesome joke, but one look from her is enough to make him shut up and follow her upstairs. To a small, cozy room in which they find Thelonius Jaha, Seeder, and sober, bad-tempered Haymitch Abernathy.

***

Truth is, Bellamy smelled the rat as soon as Raven made them leave the Training Center instead of indulging in their customary drinking on the roof. The shabby club she took them to only confirmed his suspicions that they’re here on official business – meeting a rebel big fish that finally made contact, or maybe learning what they’ve been gathering their intel for. So seeing Gamemaker Jaha here of all places? It scares Bellamy so much he reacts instinctively – takes a step forward and stands right in front of Raven as if it meant anything, him hiding her behind his body when they’ve been discovered by an enemy that can kill all three of them with a flick of his wrist, and their families together with them.

“This won’t be necessary, Mr Blake,” says Jaha calmly. “I assure you I’m on your side. I invited you here to talk. There is no need to be alarmed.”

It’s Finnick who breaks the tension; lets out a loud snort of laughter, his gaze going from Jaha to Raven to Haymitch, and flops on the nearest armchair, eyebrows raised.

“Well, the melodramatic streak is clearly hereditary,” he says with his exaggerated Capitol voice. “Where’s Wells?”

Jaha shoots Finnick a warning look, _tone down on the sarcasm or else_ , and their staring contest gives Bellamy enough time to put the pieces together: plots and secrets, and Raven’s recent paralyzing fear that transformed into restlessness right after a visit to a Gamemaker’s office. 

The rebellion. Just here, right in front of him.

“Are you kidding me?” he spits out. “You have all this… The money, the power, the resources, you have everything. And all you do to stop what’s going on here is to recruit Victors to do your dirty work?”

It’s like breaking a dam; Bellamy’s fear fills him to the brim and holds him in an iron grip, then rises and rises until it spills over, and as soon as it touches the floor, it transforms into anger, anger like he hasn’t felt for years, blind rage tinged with disappointment. This is it? This is what they’re risking their necks for? So a Gamemaker can play God and plot a coup in his cozy little office as they keep sending children for slaughter?

“Rebellion takes time, Mr Blake,” says Jaha calmly. “We have allies, but they aren’t powerful enough to step in unless the Districts rise up as one again. So yes, we do need your help. We need your help to rally the Districts when the time is right.”

“ _Rebellion takes time_? That’s what I’m supposed to tell my tributes’ parents? And what kind of allies can you even have? There is no one out there. It’s just you and us. Raven and Finnick running around and playing conspirators? That I could understand. But you? You posing as rebel leader? You are a leader, aren’t you? Of course you are. Like you’d ever take an order from anyone. You can’t even explain to your own people that they shouldn’t murder our children on TV. What the fuck are you good for?”

He knows he’s making a scene; he’s aware of Seeder’s raised eyebrows, and of Raven’s stunned gaze, but, you see, he is a creature with his head quite twisted by rage, and he can’t possibly stop himself from talking.

“So this is what you do? Clandestine meetings with trained monkeys? Making lists of supply caches in the Districts? Have you ever even _been_ to the Districts? Do you know who you’re trying to rally? Or are you just moving pieces on a board?”

There is silence in the room when he stops, breathless, his hands curled into tight fists. Raven is still right behind him, and he can’t bring himself to look her in the face after she watched her bright, bright hope for a better life be smashed to pieces. Overthrowing the Capitol? What a fucking joke.

“You know, I don’t normally approve of moral people,” pipes in Haymitch suddenly, making all heads turn towards him. “But this kid, I like.”


	18. Do we?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They spend the night in that room, the three of them: Raven, Bellamy and Finnick. They should, Seeder tells them, because it'll make for a nice cover story. Everyone and their cat knows that Raven is sleeping with Bellamy, and no one in the Capitol will think twice if they make it look like they took Finnick to bed in some discreet place when he's clearly having a crappy day.

They spend the night in that room, the three of them: Raven, Bellamy and Finnick. They should, Seeder tells them, because it'll make for a nice cover story. Everyone and their cat knows that Raven is sleeping with Bellamy, and no one in the Capitol will think twice if they make it look like they took Finnick to bed in some discreet place when he's clearly having a crappy day.

("You should," Seeder tells her. "You need to talk to them, finally.")

Bellamy is done talking now, his words still ringing in the room that seems too small to contain them. He’s silent and motionless, body still planted firmly between Raven and Jaha’s now empty seat, a statue made of pure rage. It's just like she remembers him from the first night they spent together, and it strikes her like a blow, the way she loves him in his quiet, helpless fury.

Once they're left alone with Finnick, Raven comes up to Bellamy and wraps her arms around his waist. He hugs her back without a second's hesitation even though she can tell that he's still reeling, still raw and shaken, and so painfully disappointed.

"I'm sorry, Raven," he tells her after a moment, vague out of sheer habit. Not that she needs him to elaborate.

Finnick, on the other hand? Finnick adapts to not being bugged quite quickly.

“So, am I the only one seeing the hilarity of how we got caught up in a pissing contest between factions of Capitol rebels? No? Good.” He’s still sprawled in his armchair, so casual and easy Raven wants to shake him, but, well. This is Finnick now. For better or worse, this is who he became. “Just out of curiosity, how long did it take you to make that desk lamp slash jamming device they don’t need? Because apparently they’ve been meeting in this fucking place for _years_?”

“You think it’s a pissing contest?” she asks, ignoring his question, because no. She’s not diving head first into a rant about her wasted time and wasted fear. She has a feeling something might break if she does.

“What else? The kids wanna go play rebels, but daddy won’t let them. So they go and they start a new conspiracy to show daddy. What do you think, Bell?”

“I think they can all go to hell.”

He isn't holding her anymore, but he remains close, his hand gentle on the small of her back, _I’m sorry, Raven, I’m so very sorry_. His voice, however is harsh and distant. Finnick shrugs when he hears it, ostensibly unbothered by the intimacy he’s witnessing.

“Thanks for stating the obvious, but that’s not what I asked. You think they’re really trying to overthrow the Capitol? Do we buy it that Thirteen still exists? You know, I kinda wish you hadn't yelled at Jaha so hard so he'd tell us more. Except no, I don't. It was fucking priceless."

Raven doesn't really want to let go of Bellamy's touch, she finds, but she makes herself do it anyway, and take an armchair beside Finnick's. Bellamy remains standing, as if ready to start pacing the room at any moment now.

"Why would they lie to us about this?" says Raven after a moment. "I mean, it makes no sense. We can't plan shit in the Districts if they lie to us about our numbers."

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Finnick is frowning slightly, as if putting a puzzle together in his head. "Not that Jaha actually knows the numbers. Noticed how he was avoiding that question? Makes me think he might not be pulling as many strings as he'd like to."

To be fair, many questions remained unanswered this evening; after his initial outburst, Bellamy kept throwing them at Jaha like a merciless machine, sharp and focused on spying the tiniest mistakes, all the messy chinks in the rebellion's shabby armor. It was impossible to answer everything. But the numbers of rebels and allies? Bellamy asked about those at least three times.

"Thirteen must be pulling the strings. And Jaha doesn't have a feasible way to communicate with them consistently," says Raven slowly. "I don't think he can safely get an unauthorized long-range comm."

"Can you?"

Bellamy's eyes are trained on her when he asks this, and she can tell he's trying to contain his anger, but not doing a very good job. 

"Can you get it _safely_?" he repeats. "Or would you be risking your neck again? Desk lamp slash jamming device? What jammimg device did you make, Raven? How many laws did you break? And what for?"

It's not like that, she wants to tell him, grasping for straws. It's not like that, look, it brought us in. It made Jaha find us. It made him tell us stuff.

_They've been meeting in this fucking place for years._

Her lamp, her and Monty's very life, ending up a minor convenience on Jaha's desk – just thinking about it is enough for her to burst into flames just like Bellamy did. But she can't do this. Not now, not when she finally has people, Bellamy and Monty, Finnick and Wiress. She can't. She can't give up on hope now. If the rebellion doesn’t work now, Raven will single-handedly make it work.

"You think they care whether we live or die?" asks Bellamy quietly, reading her silence. "They'll use us, and they'll get us killed out of sheer stupidity, us and our families. And then nothing will change."

Finnick laughs at that, his fake pose unchanged, and the sound makes Raven's skin crawl, because suddenly she can't stop looking at him, _what happened to you, what the fuck is going on with you?_

( _We're so alike, you and I. So tell me, Finnick, is this what will happen to me when I’m out of hope?_ )

"Don't be a child. Of course they don't care whether we live or die." A beat, studied and dramatic, and beautifully timed. "But be honest with me there, Bell. Do we?"

***

Annie Cresta becomes a Victor the very next evening, the flood that elevates her masterfully done, so grand and poetic in its destruction.

(Was it Jaha, Bellamy wonders? Was it Jaha who broke the dam, killing Raven's Millie and ten others, just to make the Games end faster? So that no one has the chance to notice three young Victors, skulking around and plotting?)

Finnick and Mags spend the night in the hospital, and when they emerge in the morning, they bring good news. Annie is exhausted, yes, but doesn't have as much as a broken bone. Peachy, really. The doctors want to keep her in observation for a few more days, just to be sure, they say. Which is Victor for "Annie is so traumatized that no amount of sedative that doesn't put her to sleep stops her from panicking."

With no Games to watch, Bellamy has way too much time on his hands to think, and he hates it so much it almost makes him shake; hates the kind of mind he has, restless and quick, unable to resist puzzles. Jaha's strategy for rallying the Districts is bullshit, but it's not Bellamy's job to fix it for him. Besides, his hands are dirty enough as it is. He's not going to volunteer for orchestrating more bloodshed just so Gamemaker Jaha can style himself a freedom fighter when he doesn't even see, after years of recruiting Victors as trained monkeys for carrying messages, that he can't break the Capitol unless he starts with breaking the Games. Armies, allies, District rebels, none of these will mean a thing unless they can make people question the Games first. The Games are the key.

Or they aren't, because Bellamy Blake isn't a strategist. He's a lumberjack turned murderer, and he's spent so much time training children for slaughter that his brain, soaked in fear and impotent rage, can't understand anything but the Games. Either way he's done with this goddamned revolution. His only goal right now is keeping Raven and Finnick alive.

Finnick finds him later, and brings with him a coil of rope he probably charmed out of the training rooms. It's quiet, the afternoon they have, Bellamy reading a book while Finnick ties a knot after complicated knot, pale and focused, as if faced with a problem he can't possibly solve.

Bellamy doesn't ask him a single question, but before he boards his train back to Seven after the final ceremonies, he picks up the small reading lamp Raven once made for him, and takes it back to her.

"I think I broke something," he says sheepishly. "Would you mind checking it out?"

She shoots him a sharp look as their hands meet, unsure what to make of him, but she has the brains not to ask what exactly is broken.

"I don't have any tools here," she says with a shrug. "I'll have to take it home with me."

"Take your time."


	19. Set the lens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes Raven a few weeks to break down quietly, no spectacular outburst or tears. It’s pressure, you see, wavelengths and jamming devices and long-range comms, her life and Monty’s in constant danger of discovery.

It takes Raven a few weeks to break down quietly, no spectacular outburst or tears. It’s pressure, you see, wavelengths and jamming devices and long-range comms, her life and Monty’s in constant danger of discovery.

_How many laws did you break? And what for?_

“I’m okay,” she tells Bellamy on the phone. “I just, I miss you. And I’m worried about Finnick.”

Finnick is a good topic, safe to discuss even over the phone. He’s worried about Annie, they say, and it’s eating him up, but maybe it’ll be good for him – to have someone who needs him on a daily basis. Annie will get better eventually, they say. It’s just how things are after the Games.

What they don’t say: Annie isn’t better or worse than any other Victor. Not more damaged than Haymitch with his drinking, not more unhealthy than Bellamy with his bottled-up anger, not more traumatized than Finnick himself. What she is is more spectacular to the Capitol eye, her fearful screams and hands covering her ears lovingly picturesque if only you can set the lens in your camera just right. No wonder Finnick is worried about Annie. The Capitol can’t stop staring at her.

Well, no one is staring at Raven as her precious hope seeps out of her day after boring day. Bellamy’s lamp is sitting on the desk in her workshop, untouched, and there are times when she wants to tell him that no, no way, she won’t do this for him; won’t go through the ordeal of smuggling parts and making up cover stories yet again, no matter how much she wants to talk to him without bugs.

She wants better than no bugs, that’s the greedy thought that rears its ugly head inside her. She wants to sleep beside him whenever she damn pleases, wants to have his company during lonely dinners in her oversized kitchen, wants to know what his freckled face looks like when there is snow on the ground. Of course she never tells him any of those things. It’d be too damn rebellious.

Her mother gives up on her completely, thank god for small mercies, and focuses all her energies on drinking herself to death, which, Raven is sure, won’t take her more than a few years now. Oh well. Good riddance.

Some time around November, Wiress starts bringing her projects into Raven’s workshop, and Raven can see what she’s doing, but she doesn’t reject her company anyway. Monty’s been given extra hours at work, and he can’t join them as often as he’d like to, but the days he does are some of the happiest Raven has this winter, despite all the shit that’s going on around her. When Finnick arrives with Annie and Mags for the Victory Tour, Raven only gets a few hours with him, but she looks at him like she would in a mirror; looks at his anger that she shares, and his devil-may-care attitude she doesn’t, at his hand resting casually on Annie’s shoulder. Does he now, she wonders? Does he now care whether he lives or dies?

Does she?

“Bell, do you still have freckles?” she asks soon after Annie’s Victory Tour, and hears Bellamy laugh on the other side of the line.

“Do I what? What kind of a question is that?”

“A mid-winter kind of question. Do you? I couldn’t tell from the Tour footage.”

She can tell he’s smiling just from the way his voice vibrates when he speaks next, because that’s a thing you learn when you love someone far away – you learn to lock a person into a voice, and read it the way you would their face.

“I do. But not so many.” A beat. “Raven, I…” he hesitates, then lets out an impatient sound. “No, forget it. I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“Tell me now,” she says without thinking, sharp and greedy, because it has to be good, what he wants to say, and she wants the goodness spread evenly throughout the year, wants it to seep into the time she spends at home. “Go on, tell me.”

“I love you too.”

It doesn’t rock her world; doesn’t make her, suddenly, pick up her work and power through the crisis, doesn’t make her reach to her mother or come up with a brilliant new idea. Some days, it doesn’t even give her the reason to get out of bed, not until Wiress shows up, asking for tea, and bread, and a wrench, and company. Things are the way they are, and Raven, rebellious as she is, is weary to the bone, distrustful and greedy, and desperate for a simple solution she knows she can never have.

It doesn’t rock her world. But it does give her something to look forward to when she mounts the tribute train in the summer.

***

When Johanna Mason climbs the Reaping stage in Seven, Bellamy doesn’t look at her twice.

Truth is, he has too much on his mind as it is, a bad feeling haunting him ever since Annie’s Victory Tour never far at the back of his mind. Even now, when all his attention should be focused on his new tributes, he keeps finding Nate and O in the crowd below the stage as if he was trying to puzzle out what they’ll do next, and, more importantly, where he himself stands.

(“You’re an idiot,” Nate told him months ago, when Bellamy returned from the Capitol and came clean, told him about all the messes he’s been getting himself into in the last years.

“Because I don’t trust Capitol people playing rebel army?”

“Because you’re fooling yourself that it’s in your power to keep anyone safe.”)

It’s Blight who pulls him out of his funk and makes him focus on here and now; his face, Bellamy notes, is calm and composed, the picture of a balanced mentor, but the comment he makes is definitely not something they want tributes’ parents to pick up on.

“Looks like we’re screwed.”

Well, he isn’t wrong. Miles looks like he’s been underfed his whole life, and he can barely stand straight, and Johanna is crying, quietly but constantly. Which wouldn’t be so bad, really, because they’ve worked with worse, except Scipio, being the idiot he is, gives her a huge, white handkerchief right there on the stage, his gallant fucking gesture drawing everyone’s attention to her tears.

So much for strategy.

Bellamy spends the entire day on the train trying to do damage control, all rebellion forced out of his head without a second’s hesitation, because even if Nate is right, and he’s fooling himself, he still has to try. He doesn’t have time for Jaha’s nonsense, and he’s been doing a half-assed job as a mentor for way too long, but not anymore. His tributes, his responsibility.

( _You think if you save one of us, it’s gonna make you feel better?_ Daisy’s voice rings in his head, but he puts a lid on it. This isn’t about him.)

Still, he leaves himself the pleasure of yelling at Scipio for his overwhelming stupidity before joining Blight and the kids for lunch, then tries to cheer everyone up. He can tell Johanna is eying him suspiciously, but he’s used to that. Given the image he has on Capitol TV, most of his tributes are surprised he can build sentences containing more than five words. Then, they learn.

What they learn from watching the Reaping recap with him right before they arrive at the Capitol in the evening is how good he is at swearing under his breath. Claudius Templesmith latches on Johanna’s handkerchief like it’s the best pun ever, and she’s media-savvy enough to realize that, come tomorrow, his subtle taunts will be a running joke of the Games, cry baby cry, because it’s such a travesty to not smile bravely when you get marked for slaughter.

Suddenly he wants her to cry. Wants her to cry, and kick, and scream, until people can’t look away, can’t swallow their conscience, can’t turn their backs on every detail of what they’re doing to this child. Except as her mentor, he can’t afford to think like this.

“Chin up,” he tells her quietly before they step on the platform. “Chin up and smile. Make them forget.”

If he wasn’t fast enough to catch her hand, his words would probably get him slapped on national television. This kind of fire isn’t something he’d ever expect from her, and it makes him think fast, search Johanna’s face for tricks and solutions. It’s about the Games, he tells himself firmly. He’s helping her survive the Games.

So he lets go of her hand gently, showing he won’t retaliate, and catches her gaze right before the train door opens, calculates narratives and camera angles. This will work. It has to. They never played it like this before.

“Lean on me,” he whispers urgently. “Come on. Do you trust me?”

He waits for her to nod before he wraps his arm protectively around her shoulders, and leads her out to the cameras like this, vulnerable and heartbroken and unforgettable, her tears of fury easily mistaken for despair. No one will be able to look away, and it’s for the Games. Not because it’s making a wave of heat roll down Bellamy’s spine when he thinks about what they’re shoving in the Capitol’s face.

His tributes, he reminds himself. His responsibility.


	20. Greedy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the morning, Raven gets out of bed, and out of sheer habit, she reminds herself to not be greedy.

In the morning, Raven gets out of bed, and out of sheer habit, she reminds herself to not be greedy. It’s the Capitol, and she has Bellamy here, and she’ll see Finnick in the afternoon, so now she has to grit her teeth and power through the parade, has to take care of Rita and Cade, and then maybe, if she’s lucky…

“I couldn’t fix your lamp,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry, I guess it’s just… I had a lot on my plate.”

It’s a lie, of course, a lie she’s been telling so well lately that now it comes to her without any effort. Yes, she’s been kept busy, thanks to Wiress and Monty, but Raven is too smart not to know the difference between having work to do and being kept busy. It’s been a year since she last felt she was doing something important.

“Don’t worry about it. I mean, sure, it’s a shame. I really liked that lamp. But if it’s broken, it’s broken. Don’t sweat.”

What they don’t say: we don’t have places where we could talk anyway. There is no real work either of us can do now.

Wells Jaha passes her a note somewhere in the hassle of prep, and it’s as brief as it is predictable: _Stand by_. Wait, Raven, wait for us to put all the pieces in place. We’ll call for you when we need more intel, we’ll call for you when we need more tech, but for now, be quiet and mind your tributes. There is no rebellion for you this year. We’ll fix your life for you in our own time.

So Raven shuts her mouth, puts on a bright smile, and goes to the parade like a good little soldier, swallowing her greed.

***

Johanna doesn’t try slapping him again, which, in Bellamy’s books, is definitely an improvement. On the less bright side: Blight looks like he really wants to.

“Are you out of your mind?” he hisses as soon as he catches him out of the kids’ earshot. “First Daisy, now this crap? You actually _want_ her to die? They’ll think she’s weak!”

“She _is_ weak! She’s five feet tall and hasn’t had a decent meal in years! You want me to tell the reporters she can take down a Career? That’ll go well.”

There is a warning in Bellamy’s stance, eyes fixed on Blight’s face. He knows he owes him for getting him through his Games, but Blight is better at bending people to his ideas than building strategies around people. It worked with Bellamy, because of course it did – because Bellamy is a liar at his core, and he could be anyone Blight told him to be. With Johanna? There is no point even trying it Blight’s way. Johanna is angry and scared, and she’ll cry that anger out no matter what you tell her.

(She’s a child, he doesn’t think. She’s sixteen, and scrawny, and afraid to die. Let them see what they’re doing to her.)

“Think for a second,” he tells Blight, praying that Johanna never finds out what he says next. She’d scratch his eyes out. “You paint her as strong or sneaky, then she gets a low training score, and she’s dead in the water. And after what Scipio did, she _will_ get a low score, no matter what she does, because the Gamemakers won’t want to fuck up a nice story. She’s not getting gamblers’ money no matter how you slice it. So let her catch pity money. Just, take care of Miles. Leave Johanna to me. I know what I’m doing.” At least I hope I do.

Blight doesn’t look too convinced, but truth is, after Scipio’s stunt with the handkerchief and Bellamy leading Johanna out of the train, he doesn’t really have a choice. The narrative is in place, and all they can do is wait for it to unfold.

***

Raven meets Annie Cresta after tribute parade; meets her properly, that is, and not for the cameras, like she did on the Tour.

“You’re Finnick’s friend, right?” Annie asks her cautiously, clearly uncomfortable with the surrounding crowd. She keeps looking back to Finnick for reassurance, keeps reaching for his hand; a far cry from the bold, strong tribute from just a year ago, but she’s walking and talking, and that, in Raven’s book, counts as a success. So Annie isn’t the same after leaving the Arena. Who is?

“That’s right. I’m District Three. We’ll be neighbors here.”

Allies. They’ll be allies, Raven decides on a whim, her gaze fixed on shadows under Finnick’s eyes. Even if Annie isn’t in the shape to be her ally, Raven will be hers. For Finnick.

But also for reasons that have nothing to do with him.

Even if she’s defeated by her own unimportance, being in the Capitol, and having so many things happening around her gives Raven a strange boost of energy; enough to let her smile, and watch, and think. It does help that she spent the night with Bellamy, too; that he kissed and touched her with care, and let her sleep in his arms, soak up the comfort of sharing intimate space. It helps to see Finnick and hug him hello, helps to meet Annie, and to spot Seeder in the crowd.

So Raven is a mess. She’s a mess just like Annie, and Finnick, and Wiress, and she’s greedy. She’s done settling for less, she’s done not having her people around, she’s done sleeping in an empty bed, she’s done watching her mouth whenever she speaks to people she loves. So now she reaches to Annie, and when she gives her her hand, Raven hooks it over her elbow, asks what’s probably a very stupid question about shellfish, and starts walking towards the Training Center.

This is nothing like real work, she knows, but it still feels important in a way Raven’ can’t exactly explain.

The picture of them walking together, Finnick trailing a few steps behind, shows up in the evening gossip news, and it fills Raven with strange satisfaction. That’s it. Let them see.

***

“Can you swing an axe?” Bellamy asks Johanna after the parade. “Throw it properly, and so on?”

She looks at him like he’s an idiot.

“My parents died and I grew up in a logging camp. What do you _think_?”

Well, thankfully he wasn’t considering a “charming and likeable” approach for her interview, because she’s staring daggers at him right now, and he doubts he can teach her how to lie in four days. Still, what she gives him is enough for Bellamy to put the pieces together. She grew up in a logging camp, so she knows what to do with an ax, and probably knows her way around a knife as well. That should be weapons enough.

“Listen, stay away from combat stations in training. Go for survival. Learn new things, fishing or tracking. Edible plants are always a good idea. Not everything you’ll find in the Arena grows in Seven.”

He expects to be challenged again, but instead, she stays quiet for a moment and looks at him carefully, as if trying to puzzle out his strategy.

“What if it backfires?” she asks finally. “You want them to underestimate me so I have the element of surprise, right? Well, what if it backfires? What if they decide to kill me right away, at the Cornucopia, to get it done with? If the Capitol thinks I’m weak, I won’t have sponsors. You can’t get me a weapon.”

That’s not gonna happen, he could tell her. This is a good plan. and you can win this. Do what I say, and I’ll bring you home.

(Think how many people will rally, if you do what I say.)

“If it backfires, you’re toast,” he says over the nagging thoughts in his head. “But after the Reaping, I think this is your best option. Brush up on survival skills. Get a low training score. Run away from the Cornucopia. Make a knife. Work from there.”

“It backfired for that girl last year.”

Bellamy takes a deep breath, an excuse ready at the back of his throat. I was wrong then, but I’m not wrong now. I learned from that. Daisy taught me something important. You don’t want me to use what Daisy taught me. I’m your mentor, not a rebel leader. You’re my responsibility, and I’m bringing you home.

( _Is it gonna make you feel better?_ )

“No, it didn’t,” he says finally. “She got exactly what she wanted. Look, can you please trust me with this?”

“What, you want me to trust you? Earn it.”

He shouldn’t say what he says next. Johanna is sixteen, and she has no business participating in the pointless plots she weaves in his head, because even if he doesn’t trust Jaha, he can’t stop scheming. Except he can’t not say it, because for some reason, Johanna Mason sees right through his bullshit, and he can’t mentor her unless she can see he’s telling the truth.

“If I’m right about this,” he tells her quietly, eyes fixed on her face, “the other tributes will forget you. But the Capitol never will.”

Johanna is smart enough to know they’re being bugged, so he never learns whether she understood him or not. But the next day after breakfast, she shows up for training early, and goes straight to the edible plants station.


	21. A better deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven takes Annie under her wing in the next few days, and shows her everything Finnick and Mags don’t have time to show, busy with sponsor meeting after sponsor meeting. Their boy is a real hit this year, and they’re working round the clock to make him shine, so there isn’t much time left for holding Annie’s hand as she learns how to mentor. Raven is more than happy to oblige.

Raven takes Annie under her wing in the next few days, and shows her everything Finnick and Mags don’t have time to show, busy with sponsor meeting after sponsor meeting. Their boy is a real hit this year, and they’re working round the clock to make him shine, so there isn’t much time left for holding Annie’s hand as she learns how to mentor. Raven is more than happy to oblige.

It doesn’t escape her attention how Finnick is going out of his way to make sure Annie doesn’t set her foot outside Training Center, but she doesn’t have words to ask him about it. _Why did they make her come here, Finnick, when she’s in no shape to mentor anyone? Are they trying to remind us all how under their thumb we are? Or are they trying to show something to you?_

Well, whatever his answer would be, she still has their back on this. Raven loves Finnick as deeply as only she can, but it’s been years since she’s been able to help him, so, she tells herself, she’ll help Annie instead. She owes the world a favor anyway. Didn’t Haymitch Abernathy once help her?

And this is how Annie ends up to be the one watching Raven’s face fall when Monty calls her on the second day of training, to tell her that her mother finally drank herself to death.

It’s shockingly insignificant, just an empty space in the pit of her stomach, where a person used to be, and Raven chokes on the feeling as Annie embraces her bravely, then lets go, and searches for something in her face before she nods.

 _I didn’t love her,_ Raven doesn’t say as she stares Annie down defiantly. _And I won’t apologize for that, either._

Well, maybe she doesn’t need to say it. She never heard anyone from Four say anything about their parents, neither tributes nor Victors, so maybe Annie knows this anyway, like she knows about silence, and fear, and boys you love standing next to you on the Reaping stage. 

There is, right there, a temptation to do something melodramatic. _My mother just died,_ she could say to Bellamy. _I want you to make me forget._ Or she could call Monty, she could call him right now, and demand details she doesn’t really want to hear, and relish in them until they make her cry like a normal person, so she could later say she mourned, forgave, and forgot. Hell, she could go to Finnick and make him hold her for long, long minutes until her presumed grief breaks the shell around him, and lets her see him for who he was when she first met him, a sharp, brilliant boy who burned bright with anger, and was so damn good at making her feel better about herself.

She could. Instead, she takes Annie to lunch, draws her a decent map of the Games complex, and hungrily eats up every minute they spend together; eats up how Annie’s eyes spark with interest, and how she unfolds quietly, giving Raven a glimpse of who she was before her best friend’s head rolled under her feet.

Maybe, Raven thinks as she watches emotions, old and new, play out on Annie’s face, it’s time to stop being so hellbent on remembering who people were before.

Annie keeps her secret well, and when Raven sees Finnick in the evening, he waves at her with casual friendliness that has nothing careful about it. To her own surprise, Raven finds herself clinging to it, even if she still hates his Capitol swagger. She never tells him why she hugs him hard that night, greedy for all the people she can call her own.

So maybe it fuels her in the next days – the grief worming its way into her head, and resulting in random bursts of energy she so conveniently needed to make herself feel better. Maybe that’s what makes her scoff at Wells’ note and mutter “Stand by my ass” under her nose, quietly, just to make sure the bugs don’t catch her. Maybe it causes her to organize a meeting after shady meeting, Victors gathering around her quietly, and whispering into each other’s ears right under the Capitol’s nose. Maybe she lets it seduce her until she pulls Bellamy into bed for a healthy round of grief sex after which he asks her what happened, and she doesn’t say, so he holds her close anyway. They’re so used to not being able to talk it actually feels quite natural, sharing silent thoughts yet again.

Maybe. Or maybe she just needed an excuse.

***

Johanna’s interview prep is an experience. It’s not even that she hates the dress (which she does, and she should, because Sextus is a tragic moron who should never be allowed anywhere near designs, fabrics or children), or that she’s mad at the idea of struggling to make the Capitol like her. Bellamy’s worked with tributes like that, he knows what to do with them. Johanna Mason, however, takes it to a completely different level, and when Bellamy looks at her, he feels vaguely surprised the Training Center isn’t imploding under the weight of her disapproval. It’s scary, how she can see the Games for exactly what they are.

She doesn’t shed a single tear now, even though she obviously isn’t as unphased about her three in training as she pretends to be, and Bellamy doesn’t have the guts to tell her she should definitely cry during her interview with Caesar. Because Johanna trusts him, but also she doesn’t, and he won’t sabotage himself by screwing up this fragile balance they have. This girl is a walking, talking bullshit detector, and if she catches him lying or manipulating, she’ll kick him out of the room and try to prep on her own.

(She’d be glorious if she had someone to play this game with, a focus for her rage and sorrow. Bellamy makes a mental note to never, ever share this thought with Gamemaker Jaha.)

“I’m not a pity party,” she barks after two hours of him doing his best to ask her dumb questions. “Stop trying to make me sound like that. I don’t want their…”

“Their money? Yes, you do.”

That earns him a silent glare, and his first instinct is to reach out to her, _hey, I’m here for you, I’m your ally. Trust me._ But there is only so many times he can ask her for that before it gets old, so he bites his tongue and sighs.

“I’m trying to keep you alive. You know that.”

“So I can have your life?” She tilts her head slightly as she looks at him, way too smart for his own good. “What’s so great about that?”

“It’s the best deal you can have now.”

She mulls over it for a moment, weighing pros and cons while Bellamy tries his best to keep his mind on track, interview and strategy, no funny business. It’s not new, the thought he keeps having around Johanna: he owes his tributes so much more than just survival, and he should give them a better deal, just like he should give it to O and Raven, to Finnick and Nate.

Whatever the fuck that “better deal” is supposed to mean, beats him. Maybe he should’ve asked Jaha.

“Okay then,” says Johanna before Bellamy’s thoughts can go too far. “Pitiful. I can do pitiful.”

As it turns out, she can’t. Come interview, she’s bitter and hostile, as if seeing the Capitol crowd set off a bomb inside her she can’t properly control. She tries, Bellamy can tell how hard she tries, but she ends the interview with a tear of frustration rolling down her face, the Capitol quite oblivious to her turmoil. Cry, baby, cry.

“I don’t want to die,” she whispers when Bellamy and Blight hug her and Miles goodbye for the last time before the Games. It’s exactly the right tune, weak and kittenish, like she’s preparing for the part she’ll play in the Arena the very next morning, but when he looks her in the eye, what he finds is burning resentment. _I don’t want to die. But I don’t want your life, either._

“Johanna?”

“Hm?”

She isn’t really seeing him now, he knows, but it doesn’t matter. The advice he gives her is for her, or for the rebellion, or maybe just straight out of his gut; a thought he shares because Johanna is his, like O, and Raven, and Finnick. He wants her to be his.

“Make them pay.”


	22. Work to do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watching Johanna run away from the Cornucopia is the last time Raven ever underestimates her.

Watching Johanna run away from the Cornucopia is the last time Raven ever underestimates her.

She doesn’t really pay attention to her, preoccupied with other things. The Games are boring this year, or maybe it’s just that Raven’s impatience is getting to her head as she tries to help Rita and Cade the best she can. The thing is, Raven knows all too well what’s the difference between having work and keeping busy, and this? Sleepless nights at the monitors, minding sponsors and gifts, and praying for miracles? This is keeping busy. Those kids, and Raven should know, were screwed one way or another the moment their names fell out of Reaping Balls, and there is nothing she can do to help them now, but she refuses to accept that she’s helpless. She’ll never be helpless again, even if it takes her years to set everything up. It’s like building a bomb, and Raven has the exact kind of patience you need for that, even if she falls short on other fronts.

Bellamy steers clear from her scheming yet again, but this time, she lets him, lets him stay silent and keep busy, and shake through the aftershocks of how his girl got to him this year. He’ll come around eventually the way he always does, loyal to a fault. Raven gets it, she does, and she doesn’t try to push him, confident he’ll snap out of it on his own, and perhaps a bit mesmerized by how his face looks when he has hope.

And anyway, she has work to do.

Raven is in a meeting with a sponsor when Johanna makes her first kill, and so she misses the whole thing, busy negotiating a deal she’s sure is pointless. Of course this is the Capitol, and so she catches up in no time; it’s not like there aren’t recaps running on every screen she passes on her way back to the Training Center. The scene itself is gory and gross: an axe Johanna had found on a dead girl from One sinks in a boy’s shoulder with a soft crunch before she pulls it out in a panicked burst of strength. Raven doesn’t even register which district the boy is from, only that it takes him a pitiless half an hour to bleed out while Johanna watches him greedily, eyes fixed on the slow stream of blood she makes no effort to stop. It comes off as merciless and bloodthirsty, excellent television, and Claudius Templesmith has nothing but praise for her brilliant strategy, playing weak until it was time to reveal her strength, great move, what a great move. They even pull Bellamy out of the Mentors’ Room for a quick interview, and he lies his way through it so well that if Raven didn’t know him to the bone, she wouldn’t realize he’s feeling sick.

Fifteen minutes later, he knocks on her door.

She doesn’t dare ask why seeing the blood on Johanna’s hands affects him so much, when they both taught children to kill so many times already, but she does kiss him deeply, desperate to get rid of the haunted expression on his face. For a second, she’s worried he’ll push her away, horrified by how irreverent she is in the face of death, so when he kisses her back, his hands greedy on her hips, she almost sighs in relief, that’s it, that’s it, get it out, get it all out. 

_Talk to me._

Maybe this is the only way she can love, with sharp cries and a bit of teeth, her body soft under his trembling breath. She picked this up from him, she thinks, choosing the right people to love until she bleeds, but he picked things up from her as well; picked up how to touch someone in just the way that distracts you from how much you want to set everything on fire.

They have a rhythm worked out between them by now, and when they start moving, it’s smooth and almost seamless, Raven’s bum foot held up flat against Bellamy’s shoulder, and her hands reaching up to stroke his face as he snaps his hips just right. When he moves his free hand where she wants it, she moans until she fills the infuriating silence that’s forever stuck between them, bugs bugs bugs; moans until she’s out of greed, out of anger, out of fear. It seems profound, in this short moment right before the end, when she arches towards him, and understands, deep down, just how much stronger they are together. 

Afterwards, when they can breathe again, Bellamy picks up Raven’s clothes and hands them to her with strange reverence, then watches her slip back into her shorts and pants, the brace placed defiantly on top of her pant leg, the way she wears it at home. He helps her put the straps in place, slow and careful, then moves behind her to fasten her bra for her, dropping a kiss on her shoulder after every hook, all five of them, and she clings to how she feels sated, filled to the brim with tenderness and care.

Then they go up to the roof.

Finnick and Annie are already there, watching the Capitol lights burning bright against the night sky. It’s a quiet moment they all share together, mundane and forgettable, Bellamy’s hand on the small of Raven’s back, and Annie’s knee bumping against hers as she reaches impulsively, and squeezes Finnick’s wrist.

“You look pensive, Raven. Your boy kissed you right for once?” he quips lightly, and Bellamy scofs behind her, then leans to press a quick kiss to the nape of her neck.

“We make do,” he answers when she remains silent, and Raven elbows him in the ribs playfully, to cover up the sudden surge of fear and resentment that rolls through her until she feels slightly nauseous, because he sounds so damn ominous. What if all she does is in vain? What if she isn’t building a bomb, but deluding herself just so she can forget that this is her life now, gorging on stolen moments and scraps as she craves so much more?

“I kissed him right,” she says, holding Finnick’s gaze.

It feels more important than it probably is.

***

He feels a little guilty, afterwards, for sharing that moment of melodramatic indulgence with Raven. It’s inappropriate and tacky, sex among the ruins, but then, it’s not like he could’ve talked to her, unburdened and shared, and asked her opinion, so he tries not to cling to guilt too much. He can’t change the way he loves, and maybe it’s time he stopped apologizing for it quite so often.

Because guilt takes up time, and Bellamy has work to do.

Johanna isn’t out of the woods yet, no matter how obsessed the Capitol is with her right now, and Bellamy works round the clock to get her as much sponsor money as he can in case she gets injured and needs help. There are five kids left in the field, and he has no thought to spare for useless musings, keeping Johanna alive for Johanna, or for the rebellion, or to make himself feel better. He’ll worry about this once she’s safe. 

By the time Johanna and Marcus from Four are the last two standing, Bellamy is skin and bones, consumed by how much he needs her to make it, and damn everything else. He doesn’t care that he’s selfish, doesn’t care that he’s working against Mags and Finnick, doesn’t care about anything but this wispy kid made of anger and fear. The night before the final showdown, Octavia calls him on his sponsor phone, worried sick after watching his last interview, but soon it turns out neither of them has words to soothe the other, and so they just sit silently for a few long seconds, static buzzing between them. 

“Take care of yourself, big brother,” she says finally, and Bellamy rolls his eyes even though he knows she can’t see him.

“I’ll bring her home,” he promises, unable to think about anything else. “O, I have to bring her home.”

“I know you do.”

Her words are still ringing in his ears when the hovercraft lifts Johanna off the Arena, bloodied and victorious, her fingers tight around the handle of her axe. When Bellamy finally looks away from the screen, Finnick’s hand is resting on his shoulder, making him face everything he’s been running away from in his feverish obsession to keep Johanna alive. 

“Jaha wants to see you,” Finnick says quietly, his voice drowned by the deafening cheers coming from the screens. “Keep quiet.”

“Finnick, I…”

But Finnick shakes his head before Bellamy is forced to acknowledge there is nothing he could possibly say.

“Don’t go to her yet. Damn, Bell, you look a fright, you’ll scare that kid half to death. Fuck off, take a bath, eat something, and don’t show your face in the hospital until you look like a person. I’ll take care of her.” Which is probably Finnick for _I forgive you._

(Which is Finnick for _Get the hell out of here, and get over yourself._ )

He’s still shaky, his head going in circles around the hairs he’s splitting, but he takes the opening Finnick gave him, and goes straight to Jaha’s office, quickly, quickly, get it over with, he has a tribute to take care of.

A Victor. He has a Victor to take care of.

When he enters Jaha’s office, everything is basking in the red glow coming from Raven’s signal-jamming lamp, and Raven herself is standing face to face with Jaha, whispering to him furiously, “I won’t,” Bellamy hears, “I won’t just sit on my ass when you…”

“Ms Reyes, this is bigger than the two of us. Rebellion takes time, District Thirteen needs time. They are the key to everything here.”

Bellamy wishes he could say he speaks up out of deep conviction, or maybe a sense of duty, because he knows his words will change something in a profound manner. He’s almost tempted to say he does it for Johanna; pays blood money for a better life for her, and makes a rotten compromise so she doesn’t have to. But Johanna’s bloodless face is not a pawn in his personal journey, and he doesn’t get to use her this way: an innocent child whose pain moves a bitter adult to do what’s right. 

So when he speaks, he doesn’t do it out of righteousness, or mercy, or love. He speaks, to put it simply, out of anger, overwhelming and impotent; the kind of rage that eats you inside until you implode, unless you let it out.

“Are you blind? Thirteen? Thirteen isn’t the key. It’s the Games,” he spits out, eyes fixed on Jaha. “You can’t sit here and wait for Thirteen, and think that people will rally when the time comes. You want to achieve anything? Do something. Make people start questioning the Games.”

Jaha almost jumps at that, as if surprised to see him here, but then he shakes his head.

“The world doesn’t start and end with the Hunger Games, Mr Blake.”

“Doesn’t it?” Raven’s voice sounds almost cruel, and once Bellamy looks at her, he can’t look away, starved for every syllable after their long silences. _Talk to me._

“You’re supposed to be a Gamemaker. Figure it out.”

Bellamy thinks they can actually see it on Jaha’s face when pieces come together in his head, the Capitol and the Districts, and the Games that hold Panem together.

“It gives people hope,” says Jaha finally. “And if we can remind the Capitol that tributes are people, that Districts citizens are people… You’re quite a strategist, Mr Blake. Welcome aboard.”

A chill goes through Bellamy’s body as he realizes what he just did; how much he said, and what exactly Jaha is going to do with it, how he’s going to use it until everyone they love goes up in flames. Raven’s face looks set, triumphant and greedy, but she’s an ally, the best ally Bellamy’s ever had, and he steps closer to her as he finds his voice again.

“Why did you want to see me?”

“I wanted to congratulate you. A Victor, that’s quite an achievement.”

Bellamy can tell that Raven catches Jaha’s meaning a split second before he does, and she takes a step back as if she was recoiling from a snake. The axe, that goddamned axe that just happened to be in the Cornucopia even though it hardly ever is; the only weapon Bellamy ever mentioned with Johanna. The only weapon Jaha knew she could use.

“You thought if you rig the Games and save her, I’ll join you?”

Jaha shrugs.

“Let’s say I needed you to… How did you say it? Start questioning certain things.”

Bellamy feels his gorge rise as Jaha, oblivious to his horror, smiles benevolently, well-meaning and ruthless, and way smarter than Bellamy ever gave him credit for. Raven stays frozen in place, her fingers curled around Bellamy’s wrist like it’s a weapon, and he has a sudden urge to step in front of her, to take her in his arms or cover her with his body, but it’s no use, really. This isn’t the kind of history that will be written by the Victors. 

He just notices, quite uselessly, that in the red light of the lamp, Raven’s face looks like it’s covered in blood.


	23. Epilogue

There are things in the next few years that are important; things Bellamy and Raven turn back to sometimes, determined not to forget.

Like: a quick, desperate hook-up in a tiny room in the Justice Building during Johanna’s Victory Tour. They probably make it sound more important than it should be, given how graceless it was; how their hands shook and their teeth clashed. What Raven remembers the most is Bellamy’s greed for her everyday body, for unshaven legs and freshly burned off fingertips, for hands and lips dry from the cold, and hair washed in regular soap he must know from home. She knew herself, in this moment, loved to the bone, and when he bent her over a small coffee table, _fasterfasterfaster_ , his hand reaching around to touch her, it felt like a promise neither of them would dare to make out loud, except they’d already done it a dozen times over.

Like: Johanna almost spitting in Jaha’s face when he shares his new plan next year, _you made some great points, Mr Blake_. It’s Finnick who catches her hand this time, understanding her in a way Bellamy never will, but when they all meet on the roof hours later, she gives him a glass of something foul, and nods when she catches his gaze. _Make them pay._

Like: Monty designing a long-range comm in the silence of Raven’s workshop, his face bright with excitement as she swallows down fear and enjoys it, enjoys it, damn it, or else what’s even the point of all this.

Like: a girl, a torch of a girl they watch climb the Reaping stage after Effie Trinket calls out her younger sister, and a baker’s boy trailing just a step behind her.


End file.
